Prof. Karl Berkelman ’59, physics, who was the Goldwin Smith Professor Emeritus of Physics and a leader in the design and construction of the Cornell Electron Storage Ring, died Feb. 26. He was 79.

Berkelman received a Ph.D. from Cornell in 1959 and joined the faculty two years later, where he remained for his entire career. Apart from the CESR, he was also actively involved in building many complex detectors that are collectively known as CLEO, according to an obituary published in The Ithaca Journal. The first track finding program for CLEO was also attributed to Berkelman. The program helped future researchers to reconstruct the path and momentum of charged particles following a collision, according to the University.

Albert Einstein believed in a static universe. On a grand scale, the universe looked essentially the same 14 billion years ago, and would look essentially the same for the next 14 billion years. Then Einstein’s very own theory of general relativity led physicists to hypothesize a beginning — the Big Bang. The result proved the universe was not static, but very much dynamic. It was “an instance of creation in the equations of a hard-core scientist,” Prof. Sylvester James Gates, professor of physics at the University of Maryland, said.

Next Tuesday, America will elect the next president of the United States and new members of the 111th Congress. Perhaps more than ever scientific issues are at the forefront of the political battleground. The interaction of science and politics exists at all levels from the elementary classroom, to the university laboratory, to the halls of congress, to the oval office.

Cornell and its faculty have long made significant contributions to not only science but scientific policy as well. They have also seen their research affected by policy, and thus have a lot to say about this relationship — its past and present circumstances, and what the future may bring.

“If you looked far back enough, the universe should have been decelerating before it [started] accelerating,” said Prof. Robert Kirshner, Clowes Professor of Science, Harvard University, and the former president of the American Astronomical Society, at last night’s lecture entitled “The Accelerating Universe: Einstein’s Blunder Undone.”

Kirshner’s lecture last night was one of three talks on schedule for this year’s Hans A. Bethe Lecture Series. Over 200 people, including students, professors, elementary school kids and their parents, attended the lecture at in Schwartz Auditorium.

Allen Kim ’10 wound his way between the congested tables of Clark Hall’s third floor. He circumvented Ernest Rutherford’s gold foil experiment. He sidestepped past some radioactive particles. He dodged some gamma rays, and evaded the nuclear forces emanating from the magnetic resonance imaging device. After scaling the steps to the fourth floor of Clark Hall, he located his homework, a contraption of gizmos, gadgets and coils that manipulates the physical properties of light. He finished his journey, and began his homework assignment for PHYS 410/510: Advanced Experimental Physics.

A group of hackers identifying themselves as the 2600 succeeded in hacking into a computer network of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. CERN scientists said the network is used to analyze data from the new accelerator’s Compact Muon Detector.

The Large Hadron Collider, (LHC) began operation in early September, but will not begin smashing particles until late in the year. The particle collisions will recreate conditions the universe has not seen since a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

The hacker team 2600 also identified themselves as the “Greek Security Team” and was competing against a rival hacker group to successfully tap the computer system of history’s largest physics experiment.