Oldest star in the universe is right in our stellar neighborhood

Nothing is older than the universe, right? Well, don't be so sure about that. Astronomers are reporting that a nearby star could older than The Big Bang by almost a billion years!

ca.news.yahoo.com...

JUST goes to show you, we don't know Jack Sh|t about the universe it seems. The earth is getting 1 billions years older every decade and stars blow up every few years (that we can see, supernovas) but we never see them form.
(Yes much speculation about stars forming but nothing concrete. Gases and matter clouding together and compressing hard enough to form a star seems impossible)

Anyways, the point of this thread is to say "cool" stuff and shouldnt the oldest star be the Sun is that was "Created" first?

This had me scratching my head for a bit especially when I got to this part of the story

The result they got was baffling, as their calculations showed that the star is 13.9 billion years old! For reference, our best estimate for the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years!

So it makes me wonder what the heck could have made the star before the bang? Seems like it may fit the multi-verse theory in a way I suppose? Well I reckon I now have something to think about while I'm at work today thank you!

S+F

So, the big bang maybe older than previously thought?

-Ghoster

frankly.. these ppl do not know their ass from their elbow.. i have lost interest in astronomers and their calculations. today it's 10 miles tomorrow it 10 billion.. too unreliable. too many miscalculations and more to come.

they should just be quiet and show us pretty pictures.

Here is an article that actually references to the astronomers and the study in which their findings were published. Don't know what gave Scott Sutherland | Geekquinox the idea that this star should be older than the universe, but what he is writing on yahoo is wrong.

Astronomers have discovered a Methuselah of stars — a denizen of the Solar System's neighbourhood that is at least 13.2 billion years old and formed shortly after the Big Bang.

“We believe this star is the oldest known in the Universe with a well determined age,” says Howard Bond, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, who announced the finding on 10 January at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California1.

Nearby star is almost as old as the Universe

I call disinformation agent.

Number one rule for any scientist:

Never hand anything over to a reporter if you want to general public to understand it. Anyway, amazing find and so close to our locality.

-Ghoster

Wait a minute -- doesn't the article say there is a 700,000,000 year margin of error? That means this star may NOT be older than the big bang. This article even SAYS that, considering the margin of error, the star may be 13.2 billion years old -- which would still be old, but only as old as our galaxy.

Also, it could be that the method they are using to determine the age of the star is flawed, or maybe the age of the universe is off by a few hundred million years.

Either way, this star could still easily exist using our current model of physics.

Shouldn't the oldest star in the universe, if Big Bang is correct, be riding the outside expansion wave from the original "Earth Shattering Kaboom"?

I still suspect that the Big Bang is only a small part of the universal origin story. One of many bangs that happened into a space already populated with stars. There is no "before the universe popped into existence", because the universe has always existed.

Originally posted by CrikeyMagnet
Shouldn't the oldest star in the universe, if Big Bang is correct, be riding the outside expansion wave from the original "Earth Shattering Kaboom"?

The article says the star could also be only 13.2 billion years old, and form after the big bang.

Originally posted by CALGARIAN

shouldnt the oldest star be the Sun is that was "Created" first?

Your postulation reminds me of the age old question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?". Which, I might add has yet to be answered as well.

Originally posted by bkfd54

Originally posted by CALGARIAN

shouldnt the oldest star be the Sun is that was "Created" first?

Your postulation reminds me of the age old question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?". Which, I might add has yet to be answered as well.

Actually, if evolution is to be considered to be the method by which modern chickens developed from other species, then the egg came BEFORE the chicken...

...or a least the first creature that a zoologist would call a "real chicken" (a genetically modern chicken) had to have hatched from a "real chicken" egg, however, the creature that laid that egg may not have been "quite a chicken" in the zoological sense of the word.

What I'm saying is that the theory of evolution tells us that the species we call a "chicken" today evolved from an earlier creature that I will call a "proto-chicken". This proto-chicken was almost a chicken, but not quite a modern-day chicken. The theory of evolution or father proto-chicken that laid that first "real chicken" egg that caused that egg to be the holder of the first modern chicken.

So the egg came first. The egg would have been carrying the genetic information that would eventually hatch into the first modern chicken. The modern chicken wasn't "born" as a proto-chicken, and then change into a modern chicken later after it was born.

reply to post by bkfd54


Dinosaurs and other reptiles laid eggs long before there was anything remotely chicken like around - but they later evolved into chickens. So the egg came first. First eggs were laid by chickens early ancestors.

reply to post by CALGARIAN


So we live in the oldest part of the universe, not the youngest ?

reply to post by LucidDreamer85


There is nothing which would indicate that any part of the universe is older than any other part. When we peer through telescopes which can take us to the edge of the visible universe we are looking back in time to the very beginning, and we do see very old stars out there as well.
The expansion at bigbang from singularity to universe, happened very rapidly and gas was spread out across the universe. Eventually the gas clustered together and sparked the first stars, do to the pressure of gravity.

So we can assume that the star was at the center of a great gascluster since it developed so early.... which would also explain it's impressive size.

Hope it makes sense. I am no expert. But this is how I would understand it.

reply to post by CALGARIAN

Maybe there were multiple big bangs and it doesn't matter.

I read a comment that maybe this is a misidentified newborn star. That would explain why it doesn't have heavier elements. However, since it's just a random comment, it could easily be in error.

I also read that this story isn't being carried by other science sites. So be weary...

IT'S ALL BS

if there was a big bang at the centre of the galaxy in this vaccuum of space there would be ZERO reason for any of the formations to stop moving outward, much less form orbits and generally all spherical planets whether gas giants or solid matter. i mean think about it. wouldnt they keep moving unless some external force acted upon them? where would that force have come from if they were all strewn in an outward direction from the center of nothing when nothing else existed.

these guys are full of spit! i dont think the big bang works.. for all we know those telescopes could just have large computers in them rendering false images of the universe. how can u trust the hullaballoo that comes from astronomers?

how does heat work from the sun if when i leave our atmosphere and am infact closer to the sun by 65000 miles, why is space so cold, why would i freeze to death being outside of the protective layer of our ozone layer instead of burn to death?

Originally posted by LucidDreamer85
reply to post by CALGARIAN

 

So we live in the oldest part of the universe, not the youngest ?

It doesn't work like that. The universe did NOT explode parts of itself away from some center point in the big bang.
Rather, the universe grew outwards in all directions at the same time after the big bang.

There is a difference.

reply to post by jonnywhite


I would disagree with that. It is unlikely that a new star would not have heavier elements since they are quite abundant now. Meaning that whatever gas condensed into a star was very likely to have elements other than hydrogen and helium.

The first star birth-death sequence was necessary for there to be heavier elements in the universe in the first place.
Subsequent generations of stars would typically have higher concentrations of heavier elements.

This just fits my opinion that there was always something here, there was no such thing as nothing..... So you can't say the big bang came and there was nothing before it because there was always something here to begin with.....

Originally posted by 0mage
IT'S ALL BS

if there was a big bang at the centre of the galaxy in this vaccuum of space there would be ZERO reason for any of the formations to stop moving outward, much less form orbits and generally all spherical planets whether gas giants or solid matter. i mean think about it. wouldnt they keep moving unless some external force acted upon them? where would that force have come from if they were all strewn in an outward direction from the center of nothing when nothing else existed.

these guys are full of spit! i dont think the big bang works.. for all we know those telescopes could just have large computers in them rendering false images of the universe. how can u trust the hullaballoo that comes from astronomers?

how does heat work from the sun if when i leave our atmosphere and am infact closer to the sun by 65000 miles, why is space so cold, why would i freeze to death being outside of the protective layer of our ozone layer instead of burn to death?

edit on 14-1-2013 by 0mage because: (no reason given)

edit on 14-1-2013 by 0mage because: (no reason given)

You might try educating yourself on the subject before you call people like me "full of spit".

1) Buy a telescope. Take it apart. See that there is no "computer" in it giving your a false image. Then use it on the night sky.

2) Read and take classes in the subject.

3) You won't just freeze up there. You will burn and freeze at the same time. The side of you exposed to the sun's light would get very hot and the side facing away from the sun would get very cold. But, you'd die from either from lack of air, or your blood boiling due to there being zero pressure. It would be a question of which of those last 2 would kill you first.