It’s mid-December, which means it’s time for the annual run of “Best Noun of 2007” stories in every major media outlet. Being kind of a mid-major media outlet, ScienceBlogs doesn’t produce an official list, but there’ll be a lot of discussion here about the top science stories of the year. This will mostly involve wrangling about stem cells and global warming and suchlike, which I’m happy to leave to my colleagues, while we take up the really important question:
What was the most significant development in physics or astronomy in 2007?
Was it Garrett Lisi’s Exceptionally Simple Theory for Making Smoke Come Out of Jacques Distler’s Ears? The Auger results about high-energy cosmic rays and active galactic nuclei? One of the umpteen weird stories about supersolids? The maybe-it’s-the-Higgs “bump hunting” saga at Fermilab?
If you’ve got an opinion, leave it in the comments.