Astronomers found an ancient star older then the universe?

I couldn't find a list of the oldest stars in the Universe, except for the one the OP is talking about. Are there lots of ancient stars still around? I know quasars are really old, but what about stars? I would have thought all the "1 Generation stars" would have burned through all their fuel already.

reply to post by pavil


Possible not as you may know small stars such as Brown and Red Dwarf stars may have a very long cycle and though some and maybe even most of the first generation stars would have been super massive very short lived some may have been small enough to have long cycle, the universe in theorised to be short of 14 billion years give or take and our own sun which is about 4 to 5 billion years being a yellow dwarf G2 class star has a cycle of 8 to 9 billion years so we are about half way through it's projected life span,. A red Dwarf being smaller has a lower rate of fusion as the core pressure is lower and a brown dwarf has a far lower rate of fusion emitting only IR wavelength light and not optical, this means that even though they are smaller with less fuel they use less and may live longer.
en.wikipedia.org...
www.universetoday.com...
So how does a life span of upto 10 trillion years for a red dwarf sound and bear in mind a star may begin small but rapid moving debris clouds in space can over time be absorbed into it's mass increasing it's mass gradually over time.

Let's apply some simple logic here:

- The star can not be older than the universe, because there were no stars prior to the universe. I am disregarding the possibility that it has traveled here from a different universe, older than ours.

- Since the star can not be older than the universe, we're left with three options:

1. We estimated the age of this planet wrong.

2. We estimated the age of the universe wrong.

3. We estimated the age of both, universe and planet wrong.

So I guess we can say with all certainty, that something is amiss with our methods to determine the age of celestial objects and the universe itself.

And this brings up a whole series of interesting new questions in my opinion.

a bit of an issue considering the universe itself is known to have come into existence 13.8 billion years ago.

A bit of an issue ...?

As far as I know we can rewrite almost everything we live by...

Maybe this is a star from another universe . They think that we are living in a Multi universe this could be the first proof I think.

we know nothing,we like to think we know everything but how can anyone know how old the universe is or even how it started?

jesus they have got so much wrong that they have to keep changing the facts that they believed in first place.

the simple truth is we don,t know and we probably never will know.

Originally posted by sparky31
we know nothing,we like to think we know everything but how can anyone know how old the universe is or even how it started?

jesus they have got so much wrong that they have to keep changing the facts that they believed in first place.

the simple truth is we don,t know and we probably never will know.

You do realize that there is no "they", right? I mean you do understand that if ANY living physicist worth his or her salt could conclusively prove that there was a conspiracy afoot to mislead us all, they would be the most famous person alive, right? You do understand that EVERY theory is constantly tested against observation and results, right? You do realize that if our basic understanding of physics was off, the very PC you use to post here wouldn't even work, right? Yeesh...

reply to post by H1ght3chHippie


CORRECT, And when they choose to discount religion as an answer the majority jump on the first scientific hypothesis but yes they do not know and it is all hypothetical and guess work, the point being that what we think we know we really do not.
I am a christian but am also a scientific person so which is really right, I will cling to my faith to my death but science had provided some explanation's but are they right or are we really really wrong somewhere along the theoretical branching of scientific dogma.
I like this thread it make's people think for themselves.

No surprise here. Time to rethink either how old the universe is, or how old that star is.

reply to post by Thorneblood


I wonder,
could this be the real god particle?

Originally posted by jaffo

Originally posted by sparky31
we know nothing,we like to think we know everything but how can anyone know how old the universe is or even how it started?

jesus they have got so much wrong that they have to keep changing the facts that they believed in first place.

the simple truth is we don,t know and we probably never will know.

You do realize that there is no "they", right? I mean you do understand that if ANY living physicist worth his or her salt could conclusively prove that there was a conspiracy afoot to mislead us all, they would be the most famous person alive, right? You do understand that EVERY theory is constantly tested against observation and results, right? You do realize that if our basic understanding of physics was off, the very PC you use to post here wouldn't even work, right? Yeesh...

i never once said there was a conspiracy,i was saying they believed things that they thought were true but now have to question them believes like enceladus.

i,m just trying to say that just cause at the time they say its fact then u can,t take things 100% cause some scientist has said it as fact then things are found to blow that fact out the water.

The whole idea of Universal age/size estimation is inherently "guesstimation". The very basis for such measurements is built on sands that shift with more and more frequency as observational data get more and more precise. This neither helps nor hinders the OP argument of course. But whenever one starts to use "bites" such as star OLDER than known universe or the like, whether they be sound or info, one invariably falls into the trap of becoming "political" about things. And I don't think that helps in any practical way. As mentioned, the size/age of the "observable universe" is not considered by everybody to be the same as the supposed age of the universe, whether spelt with lower case or capital u/U. Fascinating thread, thank you for posting.

Umm, so did we make a guess about a star that maybe conflicts with a guess we made about some other concept we have little understanding of?

What if the answer doesn't lie with religion and it doesn't lie with science.
Instead it lies with us not being smart enough to get it.
It could be "all of the above" and it certainly could be "maybe".

I'm not suggesting we should stop looking for answers, just seems pretty obvious to me that we aren't capable of understanding - so we guess and we theorize and we scripture until the cows come home.
It's all we have yet it's so short of the mark it's almost funny.

Why must theories be taught religiously?
Why must religion be the last bastion, the only way for some?
Why can't we mix it all together in an open and transparent way to see if there is some crossover.
If we could tolerate that perhaps we might be mature enough to understand that we don't have enough information to "know" - yet - and that it's okay.
I don't need to be told what to believe by a scientist or a priest, I want to hear what they think though - I want to hear what all of them think.

Knowing what is known AND what is believed AND what is thought allows us to participate and contribute to that which is known.

Originally posted by trouble_every_day
Umm, so did we make a guess about a star that maybe conflicts with a guess we made about some other concept we have little understanding of?

What if the answer doesn't lie with religion and it doesn't lie with science.
Instead it lies with us not being smart enough to get it.
It could be "all of the above" and it certainly could be "maybe".

I'm not suggesting we should stop looking for answers, just seems pretty obvious to me that we aren't capable of understanding - so we guess and we theorize and we scripture until the cows come home.
It's all we have yet it's so short of the mark it's almost funny.

Why must theories be taught religiously?
Why must religion be the last bastion, the only way for some?
Why can't we mix it all together in an open and transparent way to see if there is some crossover.
If we could tolerate that perhaps we might be mature enough to understand that we don't have enough information to "know" - yet - and that it's okay.
I don't need to be told what to believe by a scientist or a priest, I want to hear what they think though - I want to hear what all of them think.

Knowing what is known AND what is believed AND what is thought allows us to participate and contribute to that which is known.

edit on 13-8-2013 by trouble_every_day because: (no reason given)

The premise of this article is that they have now moved the star into the accepted time frame of the accepted age of the universe, and say they will most likely date it at a younger age in the future when they examine it again with future techniques. What the article actually says if you care to read it, is far different than what people are discussing. They basically said they screwed up when they aged the star to begin with and now used current more accurate means and the star is now in the window of accepted theory. They changed the age of the star, not the age of the universe, bummer for all the fringers who were hoping for the whole deck of cards to come crashing down.

This doesn't effect creationists either way. God has no beginning but his creation does, evidence of which must exist and if it is the big bang then so be it. The dating of which has no consequence to the creationist.

Originally posted by biggmoneyme
its just that it is ridiculous to say the universe is only 14 billion years old. try 150 trillion

Care to point me to any peer-reviewed articles that state this?

There are a lot of people in this thread posting replies about the article that clearly haven't even read the article.

Are we all ready to be adults yet and agree that we have enough information to cast enough doubt on The big bang and The Standard Model to admit it needs replacing?

I realize there is not anything that's genuinely ready to step in and fill the gap, which is why they are still around, but I think it's time the hostile attitudes of many science and physics enthusiasts to get checked at the door so we can start making new genuine inquiry into what's really going on.

Oh yeah wait, by the end of the article they have made enough patch work, lame explanations to "put it in the time frame" give or take 5 billion years or whatever number we need to make it dismissable enough to not have to talk about it anymore. So much for growing up and advancing science and humanity. It's fine we don't need to change we can just keep lieing to ourselves for as long as possible like a typical teenager.