'Singing atoms' win Nobel Prize for Physics

Three physicists who made atoms "sing in unison" won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for freezing matter into a new state that may help make microscopic computers.

Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman of the United States and Germany's Wolfgang Ketterle won the $1m (£680,000) prize for creating a form of matter that is extremely pure and coherent, in the same way that lasers are a pure kind of light.

"This year's Nobel laureates ... have caused atoms to 'sing in unison' – thus discovering a new state of matter," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

Their "atom lasers" could in future draw microscopic computer circuits many times tinier than the smallest in use today, to build extremely fast, powerful and compact computers. Atom lasers could also power very accurate guidance systems that could pinpoint the position of airliners and space- craft to within a few inches.

Traditional electronics, in which electricity flies around circuits, and even photronics, which uses bursts of light, may one day be replaced by "atomtronics," using atom lasers to shunt individual atoms around circuits, said Phil Schewe, of the American Institute of Physics.

Dr Cornell said: "I'm a bit surprised but I'm thrilled [the prize] came so early ... I was looking at maybe a 20-year timescale."