The age of the universe is 13.8 billion years. But one star has an age of 14.46 billion years.
I'm not an expert in this area, but why isn't anybody troubled that this old star is only 190 light years away?
'But the most confusing star of all is HD 140283, informally nicknamed the Methuselah star. At just 190 light years away, we can measure its luminosity, surface temperature, and composition very precisely; we can also see that it's just beginning to evolve into the subgiant phase and towards becoming a red giant. These pieces of information, combined, allow us to get a well-constrained value for the star's age, and the result is disturbing, to say the least: 14.46 billion years. Yet some of the other properties it displays, like an iron content of 0.4% the Sun's, suggest that it's very old, but not quite among the very oldest stars of all. Although there is an uncertainty on the age of around 800 million years, that still places it uncomfortably early, and hints at a potential conflict between how old the stars are and how old the Universe is.'
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Let's see 14.46 billion years - 0.8 billion years = 13.66 billion years. That means the star has not been measured to be older than the surface of last scattering.
No conflict at all. If science got the universes age wrong, science will correct itself with peer review.
science is so cool
Mystery solved according to space.com
it has a triagnomic parallax of 17.15 +/- 0.14 so you can infer a precise age of 14.46 +/- 0.31
that error only includes the uncertainty of parallax and i for adopted surface oxygen and iron abundance of 1.67 and -2.40.
and when you take uncertainty of stella parameters and chemical composition with oxygen contributing more to error budget you get an uncertainty for this star of +/- 0.8gyr.
you can easily assume though that this may have been one of the first bodies to develop after the big bang.
This remind me of 2015 "Birmingham Quran" which made many muslims scratching their heads.
Why does anyone think that the universe is 13.8 - 14 billion years old? The universe is being constantly created. It's not a static collection of stuff.
This is the universe what we consider to be the observable universe that followed the 'big bang'
It is roughly 13.8 billion years old and we come to this through two observable/testable measurements which are very accurate.
- You can measure the oldest objects within the universe
- And test how fast it is expanding
How old it was before hand? No one knows! Most likely infinite!
It was most likely very hot and dense phenomena.
LucyAustralopithecus,
You can't determine celestial age by distance or speed. A lot of celestial objects are moving toward each other. Our galaxy has a collection of objects and it will eventually merge with the Andromeda Galaxy.
Quote: The stars themselves should place a lower limit on the age of the Universe; the Universe itself ought to be older. That this isn't what we're seeing with absolute certainty creates a beautiful tension that may well prove to be an omen of extraordinary scientific advance. Unquote.
A very interesting article. And it's obvious the Universe must be about 13.8 billion years old or the Big Bang theory itself is wrong, misleading or incomplete. There's so much we have yet to learn.
I think this is what MCD referred to:
https://www.space.com/20112-oldest-known-star-universe.html
Maybe the Big Bang Theory will eventually come to be seen as a bit like Phlogiston in that it made a lot of sense at the time, given the info available?
False - Yes you can, and you do. Distance is one of the main keys to determining the age.
Now obviously within a cluster it is easier to determine age as you have other stars to use for reference.
But to work this out you would use Hubble's measurements to determine the distance the star in question,
This helps to refine the distance using parallax, because variations in Hubble's position/orbit will translate as a shift in observer position taking into account the red shift because obviously the universe is accelerating.
These are they key components to discovering the age of a star, Without this you go absolutely nowhere.
But after this you can start to become more accurate, you can work out the stars brightness, then you go to burn rate, then on to composition, then internal structure.
For instance, HD140283 has quite a high oxygen to iron ratio which in turn brings down the age.
Lucy - what do you mean by in the second point, regarding how it is expanding? I understand the conversation up until here? Do you mean the universe?
no, of the star as it burns its fuel. the process it goes through before supernova.
I apologise for lack of clarity.
That's alright, I thought you meant in regards to the redshift, so thank you for that.
Any ideas on the youngest star?
No not for that.
I don't think you could ever say any one star is youngest because it is far too difficult.
Perhaps you could look into Westerlund 2 cluster in out own system.
It is relatively young and very bright with incredible stars, especially large ones as well as eclipsing binaries.
I don't know much about astronomy. But I do know or at least I assume that the stars are supposed to be in the universe. So either stars are not part of the universe or what they think is a way to measure the stars and the universe is incorrect. Think about it, what they have devised is built around an assumption, not upon fact. After all no one has actually been to another star to see if what we measured here is actually the correct measurement there. Come to think about it. We can't even be sure that the measurement for the age of the universe is what has been assumed. All of it is unproven. And even the measurements that have been given for rocks and fossils here have been contested and quite effectively. One reason why there is a question about them is the base time that we are using has not been soundly established. When one calibrates an instrument, there must be a single base that is known to be true. It is so in calibrating an oxygen sensor, or tuning an instrument. And the base to jump from using any kind of carbon dating or the like must be a well known and a beyond doubt base. So all that has been established is from what is assumed as a base, and not completely tested and tried. So if one that is supposed to be tried and true turns up to raise doubts then maybe it is all erroneous.
AGAIN, that star was NOT measured to be older than the universe. You guys are forgetting the uncertinty in the measurement. With the uncertainty its age does fall within the age of the universe.
Yes, Also the universe too has an uncertainty of 0.021+/-
You could also go strictly by planck measurement of universe of 13.81 +/-0.038 billion years before you factor in external data.
But I think the consensus is the original estimate we have cited.