The work has already led to the creation of clocks more than 100 times as precise as existing cesium clocks. More important, perhaps, their work has laid the groundwork for a possible quantum computer, a superfast-machine that—if it ever can be built—would leave today's speediest computers in the dust.

"Through their ingenious laboratory methods Haroche and Wineland together with their research groups have managed to measure and control very fragile quantum states, which were previously thought inaccessible for direct observation," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a news release. The academy awards the Nobel Prize.