Oslo - Three scientists who created a new form of matter have shared the 2001 Nobel Prize for physics, writes Science Editor, Dick Ahlstrom. Mr Eric Cornell and Mr Carl Wieman of the United States and Mr Wolfgang Ketterle of Germany won the prestigious $1 million prize for chilling atoms until nearly motionless to form what has been dubbed the Bose-Einstein condensate.
This odd state, not solid, liquid or gas, allows the atoms to become "coherent" in the same way that laser light is coherent and opens up the potential of "atom lasers" and microscopic circuits, built using atoms. Their discovery confirmed theories about the universe's basic fabric that were predicted by Indian physicist S.N. Bose in 1924 and expounded by Albert Einstein.