Free Republic

Enlarge Image Light touch. Serge Haroche and David Wineland (right) won the Nobel for their work manipulating the quantum states of individual atoms. Credit: CNRS and NIST The past couple of decades have witnessed a sea change in quantum physics. Previously, scientists relied on the strange rules of quantum theory mainly to explain the odd natural behavior of masses of atoms and other quantum particles such as photons. Increasingly, however, physicists are exploiting those rules to create delicate quantum states of individual particles and to do novel things with them. This year's Nobel Prize in physics honors two experimenters...

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2012 to Serge Haroche Collège de France and Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France and David J. Wineland National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado Boulder, CO, USA "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems" Particle control in a quantum world Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland have independently invented and developed methods for measuring and manipulating individual particles while preserving their quantum-mechanical nature, in ways that were previously thought unattainable.