Methuselah: The oldest star in the universe

[Admin]

If the oldest star in the universe is more than 14 billion years old that would make it older than the universe itself! We investigate this space mystery.

Methuselah: The oldest star in the universe : Read more

 

[rod]

"As a result of all of this work, Bond and his collaborators estimated HD 140283's age to be 14.46 billion years. It was a significant reduction on the 16 billion previously claimed but it was still more than the age of the universe itself."

The problem of finding objects in the universe dated older than when the universe appears in the expanding universe model (BB for example), has been around for decades. Originally H0 = 500 km/s/Mpc and the universe dated about 2 billion years old yet uranium dated Earth rocks were at least 3 billion years old according to the published ages. Globular clusters were dated older than the *beginning of the universe* too and other objects. Other stars are reported with ages older than the universe, see In Search of Ancient Suns - Sky & Telescope - Sky & Telescope (skyandtelescope.org)

Using cosmology calculators, this problem is easy to see, if objects dated older are clearly presented to the public Cosmology Calculators (caltech.edu) , Cosmology calculator | kempner.net, LAMBDA - Links to Calculators (nasa.gov)

My observation. The age of the universe can vary based upon different input parameters like for H0 using the cosmology calculators, https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/help/cosmology_calc.html, and, https://www.kempner.net/cosmic.php. A good example is the kempner.net calculator. Using H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc, the age of the universe is “age of the Universe at z = 13.2451 Gyr” when z = 0 and H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc. Thus some stars can still be dated older than the universe beginning using BB cosmology calculators. This was a problem when H0 = 500 km/s/Mpc in the early days of redshift surveys with the universe age near 2 billion years old. Using cosmology calculator I, H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc and z = 0, the universe age is "It is now 13.642 Gyr since the Big Bang. The age at redshift z was 13.642 Gyr." Using cosmology calculator II with H0 = 70 km/s/Mpc z =0, universe age is "Age of the universe: 13.4112 Gyr, which is 100% of the age of the universe today. Lookback time: 0 Gyr." The Hubble time for age of the universe in the expanding universe model for the BB is very sensitive to input parameter changes. The list of 5 very old stars in the S&T report is a good start. What I would like to see, a database tracking all of the reports here and changes in ages to reconcile since they first appeared when the universe was considered to be only about 2 billion years old. This should be clearly presented to the public I feel. Space.com, thanks for this report.

"Further refinements saw the age of HD 140283 fall a bit more. A 2014 follow-up study, for instance, updated the star's age to 14.27 billion years. "Again, if one includes all sources of uncertainty — both in the observational measurements and the theoretical modeling — the error is about 700 or 800 million years, so there is no conflict because 13.8 billion years lies within the star's error bar," Bond said. What's more, in May 2021, another group of astronomers revised the best estimates for the age and mass of Methuselah and, having modeled how stars change over time, they found its age to be 12 billion years. It still makes HD 140283 extremely old (the sun, by comparison, is only a kid at 4.6 billion years old) but it puts the age of the star well and truly within the age of the universe. Or does it?"

 

[Catastrophe]

How can a star be older than the universe?

Easy, if different methods of measurement are employed, or if one or both methods is/are inaccurate or invalid (in a particular situation).

Not making any judgment on said methods, just voicing a possibility.

Cat

 

[rod]

How can a star be older than the universe?

Easy, if different methods of measurement are employed, or if one or both methods is/are inaccurate or invalid (in a particular situation).

Not making any judgment on said methods, just voicing a possibility.

Cat

Yes Cat, good observation. A reason why I feel the need for a database disclosing all here, going back to when the universe was 2 billion years old with rocks dated 3 billion years old Such a disclosure could be enlightening for some

 

[Pogo]

Obviously, there is much more work to be done with respect to calculating the age of the universe and the age of stars, clusters, and so forth, much like when globular clusters were older than the universe a few years ago.

 

[rod]

FYI, I rummaged around in my MS ACCESS DBs I keep. Quite a few reports I filed on older than the universe objects or universe age dates changed. Here is an example. Science All Around at the IAU - Sky & Telescope - Sky & Telescope (skyandtelescope.org) , "Her method gave a direct measurement of the Hubble Constant with an uncertainty of only 10%: 72±8 (in astronomers’ units of km/second/megaparsec), which suggests a universe roughly 13 billion years old....Freedman described several of the dozens of direct measurements that have since improved the uncertainties down to about 3% — future methods should reduce the uncertainty to 2% within a few years, which should help astronomers decide among cosmological models. Later speakers showed values from various methods that give a Hubble constant closer to 74, which would make the universe 350 million years younger than the current estimate."

Globular clusters can still be found reported older than the universe age too. Here is an example from August 2020. Age and chemical composition of the globular cluster NGC 6652 - NASA/ADS (harvard.edu) , arXiv:2004.05957v2 [astro-ph.GA] 5 Aug 2020 , "The best correspondence between observational and theoretical data is illustrated in the bottom panels of Fig. 1. It can be seen that the synthetic spectrum computed with the isochrone Z = 0.002, Y = 0.26,
log(age) = 10.15 (B08) and the Ch05 MF better describes the observed Balmer lines than the spectrum
computed with the TERAMO isochrone Z = 0.002, Y = 0.248, age = 14 Gyr. This result can be understood if we consider the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) of NGC 6652."

I attempt to keep track of reports like this in my home MS ACCESS DBs but it is difficult

 

[lfr2]

The "Methusela Star" is a field star which makes predicting its age difficult however I think the strangest thing is that it's supposedly so old but it's very close relatively speaking at approx 200 light years away. This seems very odd. My only rational explanation is that there is an element in that star that we cannot currently detect. They keep saying it's metallicity is low but there might be some other metal element in there to explain it's fast moving velocity as well as these errors in the calculation of it's age. Or quite possibly it's made if a substance or elements we know of that we cannot measure. There is even an article on this site talking about how in certain cases charged elements will be difficult to detect even if they are heavy: https://www.space.com/strontium-heavy-element-formed-neutron-star-merger.html

 

[Wind Angel]

If the oldest star in the universe is more than 14 billion years old that would make it older than the universe itself! We investigate this space mystery.

Methuselah: The oldest star in the universe : Read more

This was a study? Can I please request an actual scientific study that determines the age of this star without consideration of the Big Bang? If I had the money, I would pay for it myself.

This equation does not compute in my brain. So Methuselah is younger than they measured because substance A did not exist until Time X, therefore that determines the actual age. What rubbish. Any idiot could do that. All they did was twist around data to make its existence confirm to a predetermined model. It should work the other way.