HUGE buildings could be conjured up in space using nothing more than focused radio waves to push individual components into place. Radio-controlled construction would get around one of the obstacles to colonising space – the need to ferry heavy construction equipment into orbit and support the people who will operate it.
Narayanan Komerath, an aeronautical engineer from the Georgia Institute of Technology, got the idea from a technique called “acoustic shaping”, in which sound waves are used to build solid objects in weightless environments (New Scientist, 1 September 2001, p 32). Speakers in a closed chamber transmit sound waves that…
