After I returned to Germany from China, I turned right back around and hopped on a plane to Naples for a conference on the Cosmic Distance Scale. The goal of this conference was to understand how well astronomers can measure the distances to far away stellar objects and galaxies and use this information to measure the rate of expansion of the universe, denoted by Hubble’s Constant H₀. By more precisely measuring the expansion, it is hoped that we can better understand the structure of the universe, and the physics of the universe such as dark energy. Read More...