Scientists in Japan are reporting the discovery of a new transportation technology for moving ultra-small cargoes in the coming generation of micromachines and laboratories-on-a-chip.

A research team led by Umar Mohideen, a physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has demonstrated in the laboratory that the Casimir force - the small attractive force that acts between two close parallel uncharged conducting plates - can be changed using a beam of light, making the remote operation of micromachines a possibility.