Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens, K.C. Cole’s newly published biography of the “uncle of the atom bomb,” as Frank Oppenheimer called himself, recounts the touching and sometimes tortuous relationship between Frank, Ernest Lawrence, and other physicists as they struggled to find a way to survive a nuclear age. Oppenheimer’s solution was to found an extraordinary science museum, the Exploratorium.

Berkeley Lab’s Oct. 26 Science at the Theater event, “Dark Secrets: What Science Tells Us About the Hidden Universe,” was a smash hit: more than 600 people packed the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Host John Fowler, health and science editor for KTVU Channel 2, moderated a panel of astrophysicists and cosmologists that included Saul Perlmutter, David Schlegel, and Alexie Leauthaud.

Three-quarters of the Universe is dark energy, but nobody knows what it is. Is it an unknown form of energy that fills space, or an illusion caused by extra dimensions of space? Or is it just a flaw in Einstein’s theory of gravity? Proven techniques for investigating these questions are being refined, while new techniques are beginning to be applied to one of the most pressing problems in 21st-century physics. Part 1 discusses supernovae as standard candles.

Baryon acoustic oscillations provides a “standard ruler” for the Universe, a way to measure the details of dark energy.

Gravitational lensing, which depends on Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, directly tests its ability to predict the growth of large-scale structure.

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed the world’s first acoustic hyperlens, a device that provides an eightfold boost in the magnification power of ultrasound, underwater sonar and other sound-based imaging technologies.

Studying Einstein’s General Relativity theory and such celestial phenomena as black holes and strange attractors in a laboratory setting may soon be possible using the new breed of artificial optical materials that can bend light in unusual ways.

The electron mobility and other unique features of graphene hold great promise for nanoscale electronics and photonics, but graphene has no bandgap. Now Berkeley Lab researchers have engineered a bandgap in bilayer graphene that can be precisely controlled from 0 to .25 electron volts at room temperature, making possible new kinds of nanotransistors and nanoscale optical devices in the infrared range.