Editor's note: This story was originally posted in the April 2008 issue, and has been reposted to highlight the long intertwined history of the Nobel Prizes in Scientific American.

In the blink of an eye, a wave of visible light completes a quadrillion (10¹⁵) oscillations, or cycles. That very large number presents both opportunities and a challenge. The opportunities promise numerous applications both inside and outside of laboratories. They go to the heart of our ability to measure frequencies and times with extremely high precision, a skill that scientists rely on for some of the best tests of laws of nature—and one that GPS systems, for instance, depend on. The challenge has centered on the impossibility of manipulating light with the techniques that work so well for electromagnetic waves of much lower frequencies, such as microwaves.

Now, thanks to a decade of revolutionary advances in laser physics, researchers have at hand technologies that can unlock the latent potential that visible light’s high frequencies previously kept us from realizing. In particular, scientists have developed the tools to exploit a type of laser light known as an optical frequency comb. Like a versatile ruler of light with tens or hundreds of thousands of closely spaced “tick marks,” an optical frequency comb provides exquisitely precise measurements of light. Such a comb can form a bridge spanning the huge frequency gap from microwaves to visible light: very precise microwave measurements can, with an optical comb, produce equally exact data about light.

Myriad applications are in the pipeline. Optical combs will enable a new generation of more precise atomic clocks, ultrasensitive chemical detectors and the means to control chemical reactions using lasers. The combs could greatly boost the sensitivity and range of lidar (light detection and ranging)—and also provide a vast increase in the number of signals traveling through optical fiber.

Combs will greatly simplify the task of measuring optical frequencies with extremely high precision. In the 20th century such a measurement would have required a team of Ph.D.s running rooms full of single-frequency lasers. Today a graduate student can achieve similar results with a simple apparatus using optical frequency combs. The new optical atomic clocks also spring from this simplification. Much as a pendulum in a grandfather clock requires gears to record its swings and slowly turn the clock’s hands, an optical atomic clock uses an optical frequency comb to count the oscillations of light and convert them into a useful electronic signal. In just the past year, researchers have used optical combs to surpass the cesium- based atomic clocks that have been the best system available for decades.

In some respects, the scene-changing advent of optical combs is similar to the leap forward that resulted from the invention of the oscilloscope about 100 years ago. That device heralded the modern age of electronics by allowing signals to be displayed directly, which facilitated development of everything from television to the iPhone. Light, however, oscillates 10,000 times faster than the speed of the fastest available oscilloscopes. With optical combs, the same capability to display the waveform is becoming available for light.

Optical frequency comb applications require exquisite control of light across a broad spectrum of frequencies. This level of control has been available for radio waves for a long time but is only now becoming possible for light. An analogy to music helps in understanding the required level of control. Before the development of combs, lasers could produce a single color, like a single optical tone. They were akin to a violin with only one string and no fingerboard, capable of playing only one note (ignore for the moment that musical notes are much richer than pure tones). To play even a simple piece would require many different instruments, each painstakingly tuned. Each violin would require its own musician, just as every single-frequency laser requires its own operator.