Physics Nobel Prize rewards science on a ‘tiny timescale’

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics rewards experiments with light that capture “the shortest of moments”.

The award goes to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier.

Their work 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.

The winners will share prize money of 10m Swedish krona (£800,000).

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the three laureates’ experiments produced “pulses of light so short that they are measured in attoseconds”.

One attosecond is a quintillionth of a second – it is to a second what one second is to the age of the Universe.