French and American scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics
Tuesday for their work with light and matter, which may lead the
way to superfast computers and "the most precise clocks ever
seen," the prize committee said. Serge Haroche of France and
David Wineland of the United States will share the $1.2 million
prize, the second of six Nobel Prizes announced this month. The
award surprised those who expected the physics Nobel this year
to be related to the discovery of the Higgs boson, considered
one of the top scientific achievements of the past 50 years.
Wineland and Haroche work in the field of quantum optics,
approaching the same principles from opposite directions. The
American uses light particles to measure the properties of
matter, whereas his French colleague focuses on tracking light
particles by using atoms. Both Nobel laureates have found ways
to isolate the subatomic particles and keep their properties
intact at the same time, scientists at the Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences said in Stockholm,