The very first design for a tractor beam is here:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26448/
Original article:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.4905

I only had a quick look on the paper and my gut tells me that this on the verge of being realistic and not crackpot. Also, the conditions for the light beam to work as a tractor beam seem to be a bit too "fine tuned", ie have a very specific scattering angle off the material, excite the higher multipoles etc, so I am not sure this would work in real life, eg to pull or push a meteor etc.

Anyway, this is definitely a good first step

Star Trek technologies yet to be invented:
1) Warp drive
2) Time travel
3) Photon/quantum torpedoes
4) Holodeck

Star Trek technologies invented up to now:
1) Medical tricorder (not widely used though)
2) Portable communicators (cell phones)
3) Tablets (iPad etc)
4) Universal Translator (Google translate)
more that I probably forget now

Self opening and closing doors (it didn't exist in TOS time, in fact it was developed by a guy that first saw it on ST)

Touch-screen interface (first seen on TNG before it was developed in RL)

Warp drive - it is actually developed in theory but it needs a form of matter we can't produce in high quantities(we can't even in small, just a few particles).

Yeah, I was thinking more like unmanned probes using it. Dark energy is actually not that exotic in space and it's speculated that there are large quantities of it out there. The problem is we can't collect it and we don't know how to produce it.

My PhD thesis was on Dark Energy and I am still working on it. To be frank I am not 100% convinced that Dark Energy exists as a separate entity, ie a scalar field, some new form of matter etc. My guess is that either on cosmological scales >50 megaparsecs (~150mil light years) Einstein's GR equations need modifications or one of our assumptions and understanding of astrophysical processes (homogeneity of the matter distribution, evolution of supernovae etc) are wrong. Anyway, it is an open subject and the verdict is not yet out.

When a consensus is reached, I will most probably have to change jobs

Iirc a few years ago i had read that tractor beam tech was made and was able to move a particle or something microscopic anyhow. Is this the next step of that tech?

I don't have a clue... This design however is still only theoretical, so most probably it's different.

I recently read *somewhere* that a new containment field had been invented that could theoretically hold antimatter in place as long as a vacuum was created inside of it to prevent the antimatter reacting with matter already inside. It uses magnetic fields to hold the antimatter in place - just like the magnetic containment technology used in Trek. I can't remember where I read about it though or i'd link to it.

Does anyone in the UK also read the Sci-Tech pages on the BBC's teletext? It's page 154. They've got an article at the moment about a new theory that negates the very need for Dark Matter. The new theory is called "Modified Newtonian Dynamics theory", and proposes that the effect of Gravity changes in places where its pull is very low. The theory explains the relationship between the mass and rotation of Galaxies that are rich in gas. Critics of the new theory say that Dark Matter theory gives a better overall general view of the universe as we actually see it though.

Pff im sure sheldon from the big bang theory will make a tractor beam soon.