Beam me up, Scotty

I'm gonna punch you with my flashlight from across the room:

The team, led by Professor David Leigh, covered a gold Teflon-like surface with specially-engineered synthetic molecular "shuttles", the components of which move up and down by a millionth of a millimetre when exposed to light.

So when they place water droplets on the surface and then stimulate it with ultra-violet light, the changes alter the surface tension of the liquid and this creates enough energy to move the droplet a distance of up to a millimetre.

Although the movement is tiny, it represents a great technological leap in the new emerging field of nanotechnology, the manipulation of materials at scales of a millionth of a millimetre.