Announcing the Nobel Prize for Physics 2012

The two scientists Serge Haroche - French and David Wineland - Americans won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2012.

These two scientists have invented a method to study the properties of the quantum world. From this research opens up a new prospect in manufacturing super-fast computers.

A quantum particle is a completely isolated particle, in this case, an atom, or electron, or a photon will have special properties. For example, it can play two roles at the same time, it works in some way like a wave. But these properties immediately change when it interacts with something.

Dr. David J. Wineland (left) and Dr. Serge Haroche (right)

The Royal Institute of Sweden said that the two scientists worked independently of each other and jointly developed 'sophisticated' experimental methods to observe, measure and control the unstable state of quantum.

Their breakthrough method allowed the field of research to take the first steps towards building a super-fast computer based on quantum physics. Studies have also led to the ability to build clocks. Extremely accurate that can become the basis for a new standard of time in the future.

Haroche was a professor at the Collège de France University and the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. Wineland was a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. Serge Haroche was born in 1944 in Casablanca. Since 2001, he has been appointed Professor at the University de France and holds the position of President of the Quantum Physics Association.

David J. Wineland was also born in 1944 and currently works at the physics laboratory of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He graduated from Berkeley, California University in 1965 and received his Ph.D. in 1970 at Harvard University. He was elected to the American Academy of Sciences in 1992.

Haroche also said quantum could help make GPS navigation systems more accurate.

In a conventional computer, information is represented by bits, each bit is zero or one, but in quantum computers, one particle can represent both zero and one at the same time. If scientists can make such particles work together, some calculations can be performed at a surprising speed.