Disk technology takes Nobel Prize

French scientist Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg of Germany have won the 2007 Nobel Prize in physics.

They discovered the phenomenon of "giant magnetoresistance", in which weak magnetic changes give rise to big differences in electrical resistance.

This knowledge has allowed industry to develop sensitive reading tools to pull data off the hard drives used in everyday computers.

It has made it possible to radically miniaturise hard disks in recent years.