extrasolar planets

It's the last week of the (calendar) year, which means it's a good time to recap the previous twelve months worth of scientific news. Typically, publications like Physics World will publish a list of top ten physics stories of 2010, but we're all Web 2.0 these days, so it seems more appropriate to put this to a poll: What is the top physics story of 2010?survey software I've used the Physics World list as a starting point, because you have to start somewhere. I added a few options to cover the possibility that they left something out, and, of course, you know where the comments are. This…

What's the application? An optical frequency comb is a short-duration pulsed laser whose output can be viewed as a regularly spaced series of different frequencies. If the pulses are short enough, this can span the entire visible spectrum, giving a "comb" of colored lines on a traditional spectrometer. This can be used for a wide variety of applications, from precision time standards to molecular spectroscopy to astronomy. What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How do I compare this optical frequency standard to a microwave frequency standard?" 2) "How do I calibrate my spectrometer well…