Ognjen Ilic

1 Introduction The ability to deliver light of desired properties, such as wavelength, intensity, and polarization, to precise locations in complex media is critical for many applications across biology and biomedicine, from neural stimulation [1, 2] and imaging [3] to drug delivery [4] and thermotherapy [5].

Abstract Light is a powerful tool to manipulate matter, but existing approaches often necessitate focused, high-intensity light that limits the manipulated object’s shape, material and size. Here, we report that self-stabilizing optical manipulation of macroscopic—millimetre-, centimetre- and even metre-scale—objects could be achieved by controlling the anisotropy of light scattering along the object’s surface.

In the version of this Perspective originally published, Fig.1 was missing the following credit line from the caption: ‘Background image from ESA/Hubble (A. Fujii).’ This has now been corrected in the online versions of the Perspective.