Kansas University Professor Steven Hawley, a former astronaut, holds a model of the Hubble Space Telescope in this Journal-World file photo from January 2014.

How old is the universe, and what is its ultimate fate? Do black holes really exist? Are there planets orbiting other stars?

Since Steve Hawley graduated from Kansas University in 1973, many of the questions he asked as a student have been answered.

The former NASA astronaut and current Kansas University professor discussed those answers and more Monday evening in a lecture entitled “Hubble Space Telescope at 25: How our understanding of the universe has changed (or, fun things you can do with an education in science, technology, math and engineering).”

The lecture also celebrated KU’s first two students to be recognized by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

KU Provost Jeff Vitter introduced Hawley, remarking on his “stellar career” — a comment that drew groans from the crowd of about 125.

Former astronaut Steve Hawley presents Kansas University seniors Jessica van Loben Sels and Jennifer Stern with certificates commemorating their selection for Astronaut Scholarship Foundation honors on Monday, Oct. 5, 2015. This was the first year KU was accepted to participate in the national program, which is intended to encourage students who wish to pursue careers in engineering, natural and applied sciences.

Hawley first discussed the creation of the foundation, which was intended to encourage students nationwide to “pursue scientific endeavors, with the goal specifically of keeping America at the forefront of science and technology.”

He said candidates must be nominated by faculty and majoring in engineering, natural or applied science, with the intent to pursue research to advance their fields upon completion of their degree.

“For the past several years we’ve been working at KU to get (Kansas) University included (in the scholarship program),” Hawley said. “…We were successful this year in getting accepted into the program.”

That meant the foundation was able to offer the two $10,000 scholarships to KU students for the first time this year: Jennifer Stern, a senior from Lawrence, and Jessica van Loben Sels, a senior from Albuquerque, N.M.

“We hope to be able to do that every year as long as we continue to nominate candidates as qualified as our recipients today,” he said.

Hawley went on to discuss the Hubble’s shaky beginnings in 1990, when many in politics and the media — including former late night TV host David Letterman — mocked the telescope’s blurry, low-resolution images.

“We quickly figured out the reason for that was that the mirrors were the wrong shape,” he said. “… That was a real crisis.”

NASA fixed the problems in 1993, which enabled astronomers to start revolutionizing the knowledge we have about the universe.

Hawley went on to answer some of the questions he had posed as an astronomy student at KU.

Kansas University Professor Steven Hawley, a former astronaut, holds a model of the Hubble Space Telescope in this Journal-World file photo from January 2014.

He said with help from the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have determined that the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old. Part of that discovery was rooted in a long-exposure photo — 342 separate exposures, spanning 10 days in December of 1995, to be exact — that revealed thousands of specks, a majority of which are individual galaxies.

In 1997, Hawley said, scientists saw one of the “first definitive detections” proving the existence of black holes. Since then, much larger black holes have been discovered.

Astronomers also used the Hubble to observe distant supernovae to refine their understanding of the expansion of the universe in the late 1990s. They discovered that it is expanding much more rapidly than they previously thought, Hawley said.

“The universe somehow contains this thing which we call ‘dark energy.’ Astronomers are really good at naming stuff even when we don’t know what it is,” he joked. “And this dark energy works like a negative gravity, and it’s causing the universe not only to expand but to speed up.”

Combining this knowledge with prior knowledge of dark matter, astronomers have determined 95 percent of what makes the universe what it is is “stuff we don’t know anything about,” Hawley said.

“We now think we understand about 5 percent of the universe,” Hawley said. “But, on the other hand, it’s further down for all of you young researchers to tackle.”