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Astronomers have so far been attempting to find alien life by sniffing out their chemical signature.

But researchers say they have found a better way of finding extra-terrestrial beings: through vibrations.

The European team has now created the first tiny motion detector that it claims may someday help find microscopic life forms on distant planets.

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Alien hunter: European scientists have developed an extremely sensitive motion detector that can be built using already-existent technology. The device can hold around 500 bacteria

Taking advantage of movement, which they call 'a universal signature of life,' the sensor aims to identify on a nano-level the tiny motions that all life forms make.

They team began to explore the possibility of searching for life with a sensor attuned to those tiny vibrations in organisms such as bacteria and yeast.

'The nanomotion detector allows studying life from a new perspective: life is movement,' said Professor Giovanni Longo at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. 

'This means that the nanomotion detector can detect any small movement of living systems and deliver a complementary point of view in the search for life.'

Good vibrations: The sensor has already shown it can detect living things, including E coli (artists's impression pictured) and yeast, as well as human, plant and mice cells in the lab

Nanosensor detects tiny vibrations - could find life on other...

Professor Longo worked with colleagues at Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie in Belgium to create the an instrument that is smaller than a millimetre - just a few hundred microns in length.

One micron is equal to 1000 nanometres or the thickness of a red blood cell. Most bacteria are from 1 to 10 micrometers long and the device can hold around 500 bacteria.

The team tested the sensor on a variety of living things, including E. coli, yeast, as well as human, plant and mice cells in the lab.

In all cases, when living organisms were placed near the sensor, they 'produced an increase in the amplitude of the measured fluctuations,' said the study.

Professor Longo also scooped up soil and water from the grounds near his Swiss lab and found that the sensor could detect tiny life there, too.

Researchers found they could manipulate the movements of the life forms by adding nutrients which the cells would consume, or adding chemicals that would kill them, making the motion stop.

'The detection system can be used as a simple, extremely sensitive, and weight-efficient 'life detector,'' the study said.

A prototype would cost less than £6,400 ($10,000), would use very little battery power and could be contained in a 20 by 20 cm box. 

The device has not been presented yet to Nasa or Esa, but efforts are under way to write a proposal and make a prototype that could travel to space on a robotic vessel.

If it had been available to the Esa's Rosetta mission, which recently sent its Philae lander onto a comet for the first time and detected, it could have propelled the science one step further, the researchers claims.

If the world's space agencies find a way to use it, the detector could be used to search for life on the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, or on Mars, where it might help scientists recognise life exists in a form that they had not previously expected or understood.

Sense of scale: The sensor is just a few hundred microns in length. One micron is equal to 1000 nanometres or the thickness of a red blood cell or a glucose molecule

The sensor could also be used to detect extreme life forms in areas that are hard to measure on Earth, such as volcanoes and the ocean floor, he said.

However, it could be years before the sensor is actually tested in space.

'It is rare that anything is "simple" in the context of space exploration,' said Ariel Anbar, a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the department of chemistry and biochemistry at Arizona State University.

Nonetheless, Professor Anbar, who was not involved in the study, described the work as 'refreshing' and a 'fundamentally new idea.'

'Motion-detection on such a scale has never been attempted before as an extraterrestrial life detection approach,' he said.

'If it is as technologically simple to implement as the authors claim, then it could be worth integrating into future mission concepts.'

If the world's space agencies find a way to use it, the detector could be used to search for life on the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, or on Mars (pictured), where it might help scientists recognise life exists in a form that they had not previously expected or understood