The general public insists on being spectators at the forefront of scientific advancement and discovery, but without any of the skills needed to understand the nature of the discussions. They see the process as a very arbitrary and seemingly irrational replacement of one number with another. Every change is seen as a revolution, every modification is seen as scientists not being able to make up their minds, and so on.
The age of the universe has recently changed because the Hipparchos Astrometric satellite launched by ESA, succeeded in measuring by trigonometric parallax, the distances to over 50 Cepheid variable stars. This established once and for all, a crucial luminosity calibration to the period-luminosity relation. The result is that the entire distance ladder used by astronomers for determining distances outside the Milk Way galaxy, has been revised upwards by 10 percent....not a factor or 10....not a factor of 2...but a factor of 10 percent ( 1.10). This means that every object outside the Milky Way is now 10 percent further away. This means the universe is 10 percent bigger. This means that Hubble's constant ( velocity / distance) is now 10 percent smaller and closer to 60 kilometers/sec/megaparsecs than it is to 70 kilometers/sec/megaparsecs. This means that the age of the universe is also 10 percent older that we had calculated a few weeks ago by about 1 billion years.
Now, the discussion resumes over the age of the universe and the age of the oldest stars, but now the differences are not as large as they used to be. Most importantly, ALL of the methods used in the past for determining the age of the universe and distances have to be revised upwards by 10 percent...one time only, and by a constant factor due to the Cepheid recalibration. Such a major recalibration in astronomy happens only once in a lifetime. Congratulations for being among the lucky to have lived at the right time!