A team of scientists has created a real-life miniature "tractor beam" - as featured in the Star Trek series - in a development which may lead to more efficient medical testing, SkyNews reported.

The microscopic beam - created by scientists from Scotland and the Czech Republic - allows a source of light to attract objects.

Light manipulation techniques have existed since the 1970s, but researchers say the experiment is the first instance of a beam being used to draw objects towards light.

Researchers from the University of St Andrews and the Institute of Scientific Instruments (ISI) in the Czech Republic say development of the beam may be an aid to medical testing, such as in the examination of blood samples.

A tractor beam was used to pull in spaceships and other large objects in the popular U.S. science fiction show.

Normally, when matter and light interact, a solid object is pushed by the light and carried away in a stream of photons.

However, in recent years, researchers have realised that there is a space of parameters when this force reverses.