Nucleation phenomena of clusters or clouds, their stability, growth, chemical activity and optical behaviour exhibit many similarities, and striking complementary aspects can be withdrawn from the investigation of both. As a result, moder experimental and computational tools, as they were developed for cluster science, amy well be beneficial for aerosol research and vice versa. Most fascinating perspectives in this regard arise from femtosecond laser spectroscopy, where experiments which were initially motivated by understanding the dynamics of clusters, now indicate exciting atmospheric application like remote aerosol analysis, material-free cloud inijection or the laser control of loghtnings.