From the campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

Here's your host, Scott Bertram.

Hello again, everybody, and welcome in to another edition of The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.

On this episode, we'll talk with Tim Dulch, physics professor at Hillsdale, about the 30th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope.

Chris Bedford from the Federalist will discuss media and the future of journalism.

Khalil Habib from Hillsdale's Politics Department on the Magna Carta.

And we'll hear portions of the 168th commencement address at Hillsdale College from this past summer,

given by Professor Emeritus of History, Tom Connor.

First, we're joined now by Dr. Timothy Dolch, Assistant Professor

of Physics at Hillsdale College. Dr. Dolch, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Scott.

This year, 2020, marks the 30th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope in space. I would imagine

most of us, if not all of us, have seen

images provided by this telescope in space and now we mark 30 years of its operation.

Tell us what makes the Hubble telescope unique?

What were the hopes when it was first put up into space?

The Hubble Space Telescope is unique because it's the only optical telescope above our Earth's

atmosphere.

So you get rid of all of the blurriness that results from looking through all of that air.

In other words, you get rid of twinkling and you get rid of blurriness and other distortions.

So that's the amazing part.

It's actually not the largest telescope by far.

It's a main mirror of two and a half meters. To put that in context,

...