If you’re a fan of Doctor Who, you’re well aware of his handy tool, the Sonic Screwdriver.

In our recent Specialty Items Holiday Geek Gift Guide, we featured a couple of these screwdrivers…though they were only of the toy variety for fan and collector amusement. Now, there’s word that living breathing scientists out there are actually working on the technologies to create a real Sonic Screwdriver.

The screwdriver, for those who don’t know, is the ultimate tool, used mainly to fix pretty much anything and get past all types of locks, both electric and mechanical.

The hope is to develop a tool that emits incredibly powerful ultrasonic sound waves that will form something resembling a miniature tornado, allowing users to move and manipulate objects using the waves.

Bristol University’s Professor Bruce Drinkwater, who is working with The Big Bang: UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair to figure out the technology, hopes his work inspires other bright minds to work on things that once seemed impossible.

Drinkwater had this to say about the fictional Doctor Who universe and evolutions in our own technologies.

As you read this, testing is already underway in modern manufacturing settings using the ultrasonic sound waves to fix parts, and the medical field is working with force field waves able to separate diseased cells from healthy cells.

[Source: Bristol University via io9]