1.   Using laser cooling, scientists trap the atoms, holding them within carefully tuned beams of laser light.

2.   It was at Bell Labs that Chu met Arthur Ashkin, who was trapping microscopic particles with laser light and who dreamed of trapping atoms.

3.   To create the condensate, the physicists used magnetic fields to trap the atoms then slowed and cooled them by aiming a web of ordinary lasers on the trap.

4.   Asked how he began his physics research on trapping atoms with laser beams, William Phillips said it was a combination of high theory and high spirits.

5.   Atoms became trapped in the valleys, no longer flowing freely.

6.   That is, if you have trapped many atoms and you cool them enough and they are dense enough, they all collectively collapse to the lowest energy state.

7.   Two American researchers and one from France won the physics prize for work using lasers to trap atoms at temperatures a hair above absolute zero.

8.   Two American physicists and one from France were named winners Wednesday of the Nobel prize in physics for ground-breaking experiments to cool and trap atoms using lasers.