Alexei V. Filippenko, astronomer and author, dazzled listeners during his Wittenberg Series presentation on March 21 titled “Einstein’s Biggest Blunder? The Case for Cosmic Antigravity.” A professor of astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley, Filippenko, along with his team of researchers, discovered four years ago that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, perhaps due to the cosmic antigravity effect of a nonzero vacuum energy density.

That discovery was hailed as the top “Science Breakthrough of 1998” by Science magazine. Author of The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium, Filippenko, who has been at the forefront of efforts to develop robotic telescopes for CCD imaging, also suggested that this universe should actually be called a multiverse as it is one of many. His lecture, the 12th Wittenberg Series event this year, was sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society and thedepartment of physics.