The Methuselah star found.. Older than the Universe?

[Ichingcarpenter]

Scientists have discovered an "impossible" star which appears to be older than the universe.

The mysterious star Methuselah appears to be between 14 and 15 billion years old - a bit of an issue considering the universe itself is known to have come into existence 13.8 billion years ago.

Oddly enough, Methuselah is even located inside our own galaxy - about 190 light years away.

And even after using new information about the star's distance from us, its brightness and its structure, scientists are unable to place an estimate of its age much below 14.5 billion years - still older than the universe.

Fortunately for the team from Pennsylvania State University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, there appears to be a margin of error of about 800 million years, or so - enough to just barely place the star below the age of everything else, if peace of mind is important to you.


http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/08/astronomers-find-ancient-star-methuselah_n_2834999.html

Methuseiah ss purported to be the oldest person to ever live. Extra-biblical tradition maintains that he died on the 11th of Cheshvan of the year 1656 (Anno Mundi, after Creation), at the age of 969, seven days before the beginning of the Great Flood. Methuselah was the son of Enoch and the grandfather of Noah......just so you know......

[geckosfeet]

1. ... or there is chink or something unaccounted for in the dating calculations

[LuvNewcastle]

2. Maybe it's from a different universe.

It's possible that the area we call the Universe is actually just a part of a greater cosmos.

[DetlefK]

3. Our "universe" actually is, but all parts of the greater cosmos were created in the same Big Bang.

Think of our universe as a whole as a bunch of marbles in a bowl. Because light-speed is finite and the age of the universe is finite, we have an event-horizon that determines how far we can look: That's represented by the size of the marble.
According to theory, the universe expanded faster-than-light for a an extremely short time after the Big Bang. That would mean that there are regions of our universe so far away, that we can't see them: Light from there hasn't arrived yet because it's too slow.
That's why the bowl contains lots of marbles: Each is an event-horizon, with the people at its center unable to look beyond.

(It gets weirder: It's possible that the laws of physics in another part of the universe, far far away, are slightly different.)

[LuvNewcastle]

5. I've got to do more reading on this subject.

I read one of Hawking's books and a couple of books by Brian Greene -- I have a problem remembering titles -- but there's so much about the formation of the Universe that I've never even heard, much less remember. Thanks for the reply. Truth is certainly much stranger than fiction when it comes to physics and cosmological studies.

[undeterred]

4. Methuselah created the universe.

Problem solved.

[another_liberal]

6. Nine hundred sixty-nine years old?

Last edited Sun Aug 11, 2013, 09:46 AM - Edit history (2)

He died, "Seven days before the beginning of the Great Flood?"

I see.

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. It was for our education on the word

which I quickly got out of wikipedia.

I wasn't familiar with the word which I thought others might also be ignorant of so I saved them some time looking it up for them.

You don't have to be a dick
But I guess you know that too.

[Stargazer09]

10. I appreciated the effort

I had heard the name before, but I wasn't sure why the star was given that name. You saved me a little time AND gave me insight into the news item.

Thank you.

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. Thanks , I also found the name amusing

since it involved a 'time reference' I wasn't familiar with.

As far as the star story goes, I also found it amusing and worthy of debate and discussion.

I need to rewind my 1973 Bulova Accutron watch now.
its tuning fork is off.

[another_liberal]

12. I guess that was a little dickish. I apologize.

I woke up on the wrong side of an empty twelve pack this morning.

[Thor_MN]

7. Calibrating multiple thousand mile long rulers when one can only access an angstrom of it...

There's bound to be some problems at the far end of them.

[paleotn]

8. Oh, please.....

"Fortunately for the team from Pennsylvania State University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, there appears to be a margin of error of about 800 million years, or so - enough to just barely place the star below the age of everything else, if peace of mind is important to you." ly throug

Corroboration of the f'n data with additional f'n measurements is what's f'n important!!!!! Sometimes I really hate journalist types. Prime examples of the importance of a well rounded education. Yes, that includes the hard, sciency stuff they seem to flee from as undergrads and grad students. A little exposure to actual science goes a long way in insuring said journalists keep the foolish dribble to a minimum.

"'Methuselah' Star Not Older Than Universe After All, New Hubble Telescope Data Show"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/08/methuselah-star-age-older-universe-hubble-telescope_n_2833994.html

"Now a team of astronomers has derived a new, less nonsensical age for the Methuselah star, incorporating information about its distance, brightness, composition and structure."

"Further observations should help bring the Methuselah star's age down even further, making it unequivocally younger than the universe, researchers said."

As usual, no wild, ridiculous, unsubstantiated "woo" is necessary here. Just a very old and interesting star.

[eppur_se_muova]

13. Rec. :) nt

[Lugal Zaggesi]

14. In the end, the astronomers estimated that HD 140283 was born 14.5 billion years ago, plus or minus

800 million years.
That's a problem, since most researchers agree that the Big Bang that created the universe occurred about 13.8 billion years ago.

An age range of 13.7 billion to 15.3 billion years old - I wouldn't start celebrating just yet.

The uncertainty Bond refers to is plus or minus 800 million years, which means the star could actually be 13.7 billion years old — younger than the universe as it's currently understood, though just barely.

It could also mean the star is actually 15.3 billion years old - that's why it's called "uncertainty". Maybe the universe is much older than currently understood. Lots of elegant theories were killed by ugly, inconvenient facts.

Further observations should help bring the Methuselah star's age down even further, making it unequivocally younger than the universe, researchers said.

Or maybe further observations make the error bars smaller, and it becomes 14.5 billion +/- 0.1 billion years old. Whoops. You can't say what "further observations" should show - you have to actually make them first.

So - further observations might firm up to show an age for the star of 13.8 billion years +/- 0.1 billion years - that's a possibility. Or maybe stellar physics gets shaken up - and the way they calculate age for a star has to be changed. Or maybe the whole Big Bang idea gets rethought. Who knows.

That's the beauty of Science. Everything has to fit - everything. One small anomaly can lead to a whole big rethink of some field that was thought to be well understood.

The star is just passing through the Earth's neck of the galactic woods and will eventually rocket back out to the Milky Way's halo, a population of ancient stars that surrounds the galaxy's familiar spiral disk.

The Methuselah star, which is just now bloating into a red giant, was probably born in a dwarf galaxy that the nascent Milky Way gobbled up more than 12 billion years ago, researchers said. The star's long, looping orbit is likely a residue of that dramatic act of cannibalism.

Whatever they work out, there's plenty of other ancient stars to check the results on, eventually.

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

15. Methuselah - Finally we've found the vampire home-system

Now I just need to know where the werewolf home system is so that perhaps I can go home.

[jimlup]

16. I think that the cosmologists have painted themselves into a corner

with their sweeping claims of 13.8 billion as the age of the universe. This is based on a measurement of the Hubble constant which is based on something called de Sitter space which is a solution to Einstein's equations that allows us to understand the expansion based on a "simple" gravitational model.

But we know this model is wrong because we have measured an acceleration of the expansion! If the expansion is accelerating then common sense tells me that the universe could in fact be older than the answer from the Hubble constant (it is the reciprocal of it though someone can correct me if I've gotten that wrong.)

Back when I was a graduate student in physics we had a similar problem as several of the gobular clusters were estimated to be 18 billion years old and some even older based on the then accepted stellar evolution models. That apparently changed though I never heard the resolution. Still I'm glad to see a star that doesn't fit the simple model.

Yes this is interesting. Physics and cosmology is still reeling from the 1999 discovery that the expansion is accelerating. Hopefully something like this will provide a crack in the theory from which new ideas may arise.

[jeff47]

17. It's based on other measurements

It's based on running the Lambda-CDM model backwards and observations from the WMAP and Planck spacecraft.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe)

Older estimates were based on the Hubble constant, but dark energy makes those earlier calculations inaccurate. You can still run the calculations taking dark energy into account, but it doesn't give you any better certainty than the methods above.

[jimlup]

18. Thanks - I've wondered about this for awhile