Wendy Freedman

Thanks very much.

Yes, data is the ultimate arbiter.

We can have lots of ideas, but if they don't fit the universe, we throw them out.

We need them both.

The data without theory is not very useful.

So it's when you have an interplay between the two that it becomes interesting.

Science is not –

It has no political affiliation.

That's one of the meanings of science.

It really is.

Yeah.

So when I started in pre-Hubble, the argument at the time, there was a big debate about the size and the age of the universe.

And people were arguing about whether the universe was 10 or 20 billion years old, which is a big difference.

And so Hubble was built.

In fact, the size of the primary mirror of the telescope was set to allow, they didn't let it go any smaller because they wanted to be able to have Hubble measure Cepheids, the stars that we use to measure distances with that telescope.

And so there was an effort, of course, because you could save costs to cut the size of the primary mirror even further.

And it was set by that to resolve this debate between a Hubble constant of 50 and 100 at that time.

I mean, it's interesting because, you know, there were two groups, competing groups that, you know, Sandage and Tomon and DeVocalure who were making these measurements.

And so the arguments between 50 and 100 centered on their argument.

But if you look at the published values at the time, there were plenty in the middle, right?