Would conducting research to measure sound waves at the subatomic level improve digital sound technology as lasers do with technology related to light an matter? Carl:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4944220Laser Work Earns Trio Nobel Prize for Physics
by David Kestenbaum
Michaela Rehle
German scientist Theodor Haensch, from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in
Munich, shares the 2005 Nobel physics prize with two Americans for work in the
field of optics. Reuters
Morning Edition, October 4, 2005 � The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded
to three scientists for their work on optics and high precision measurements
using lasers. Roy Glauber, John Hall and Theodor Haensch will share the $1.3
million prize. Engineers have used their observations to improve lasers, Global
Positioning System technology and other instruments.
Research by Hall, 71, of the University of Colorado, and Haensch, 63, of the
Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Germany, determined the color of light at the
atomic and molecular level. Their work, which used light to measure the internal
structure of atoms, helped advance a technique that has been used to an accuracy
of 15 decimal places
Their research builds on the fundamental theoretical work of Harvard
University's Roy Glauber, who won the other half of the prize for discoveries of
how light and matter interact at the subatomic scale. Glauber showed in the
1960s that the particle nature of light affected its behavior under certain
circumstances. Although those conditions are rarely observed in nature, they are
often relevant in sophisticated optical instruments.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
