i look like one of the hubbell astronauts advance people. but it's all the better to kick butt and try to get this job done and help get jobs and health care going in our country again. >> all right. we definitely want a photo opportunity of that. >> oh, you're going to get one! >> thank you, senator, for joining us tonight. >> bye. >>> ben cardin issued a statement, including these memories: i served for two years on the senate judiciary committee with senator kennedy, and i consider him one of the most remarkable, outstanding leaders of our generation. personally i lost someone who has been a mentor, a friend and one of my heroes. the nation has lost a leader who fought to right wrong, who worked to insure that all americans had a better tomorrow, and who knew how to work across-party lines the make important progress. >>> on behalf of all of maryland, governor martin o'malley shared his memory of senator ted kennedy. >> the most powerful type of presence that any person can bring to this world is the presence of compassion. and oftentimes

wilson has been home to the biggest telescopes, including the hooker, which ed wid hubbell used in the 1920s to determine there were galaxies beyond the milkiway. his findings along with einsteins theory of relativity led to the big bang theory. >> it's serve a large community of astronomers and scientists who are crossing their fingers and hoping for the best at this point. >> reporter: officials say that there's very little doubt that the fire will in fact reach mt. wilson, and they say that it will likely happen at some point today, brian. the only question at this point is how high will the flames burn and how much damage will it do? brian? >> michael okwu at the command post for us tonight. michael, thanks. >>> we head now to the east to washington and elsewhere to the continuing debate over health care reform and questions about what happens now that one of its longtime supporters, senator ted kennedy, is gone. also what to do with that vacancy in the u.s. senate. our chief white house correspondent and political director chuck todd is with us tonight with details on how all of t

it led to hubbell and the dreams of the next decade. now i think those dreams are changing.he bigger universe for this planet are beckoning. scientifically, exploration- wise, and in the minds of many of the people who have to do it. i maintain it going to mars someday with humans is both scientifically compelling but is also compelling in its own right as an example of what we can actually do in the domain of high-technology in space. i would like to finish with the thought that you have not seen anything yet. sorry to have this moving again. it is loaded up again. i would like to finish with this thought. mars is the fourth planet from the sun. here's my daughter in the sixth grade giving a presentation about mars to her buddies, 120 kids in broward county. but i show this because they were interested enough to ask for a writ. a bunch of random americans sixth grade girls and boys wanted to hear about the universe through the eyes of mars. that is what we are presented with today as our nation deliberates and the nations in the world, how to get to mars. the science from t

i am john hubbell, director of lectures and seminars and it is my privilege to welcome us to our auditoriumto welcome those who join us on the heritage.org website. we do ask everyone in house to check that cell phones have been turned off as a courtesy to our speakers and those recording the festivities. and we of course remind our internet viewers that questions can be submitted to us at any time simply addressing them via e-mail to the speaker at

with hubbell, we have done this for tens of galaxies with these variables, and we now know the age of the universe to be 13.7 billion years. until a few years ago, we knew this number 2 and accuracy of about 10% or so. before hubble, this number was not known to better than within a factor of two. we recently used to these variables in this galaxy. we know the distance it very well from other measurements. and we are now using this and managed to improve the value of the hubble constant or rate of expansion of the universe, and we know these two better than 5%. we know the rate of expansion of the universe better than 5%. evolution of galaxies in the cost of star formation rate. this is the hubble altered the to field. this is the deepest damage in visible light ever taken. -- the deepest in age in visible light ever taken. there is another start summer up here. other than that, every point of life -- light see here is a galaxy with 100 billion stars like the sun. every point of light here. there are some 1000 thousand galaxies in this image alone, -- 1000 -- 10,000 galaxies in this i