3 scientists win Nobel Prize in physics for looking at electrons in atoms during split seconds

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for their work on how electrons move around the atom during the tiniest fractions of seconds, a field that could one day lead to better electronics or disease diagnoses.

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for their work on how electrons move around the atom during the tiniest fractions of seconds, a field that could one day lead to better electronics or disease diagnoses.

The award went to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L'Huillier for their study of the tiny part of each atom that races around the center and that is fundamental to virtually everything: chemistry, physics, our bodies and our gadgets.

Electrons move around so fast that they have been out of reach of human efforts to isolate them, but by looking at the tiniest fraction of a second possible -- one quintillionth of a second known as an attosecond -- scientists now have a "blurry" glimpse of them and that opens up whole new sciences, experts said.

"The electrons are very fast and the electrons are really the workforce in everywhere," Nobel Committee member Mats Larsson said. "Once you can control and understand electrons you have taken a very big step forward."

Their experiments "have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules," according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announced the prize in Stockholm. They "have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy."

At the moment, this science is about understanding our universe, but the hope is that it will eventually have many practical applications.

L'Huillier, who is only the fifth woman to receive a Nobel in physics, said she was teaching when she got the call that she had won. She joked that it was hard to finish the lesson.