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Oldest Planet Ever Discovered

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the brand-new-old-stuff dept.

crymeph0 writes "NASA has found the oldest known planet in a globular star cluster in the constellation Scorpius. At 13.7 billion years old, it's just slighly (~1 billion years) younger than the universe itself. Get more info from HubbleSite"

6 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Having taken one semester of astrophysics... by Valar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    at not being an expert by any means, I wonder how they detected it. I assume (because it is so massive and in a binary system) they detected it by the normal "wobble" method. Does anyone know?

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    Crudely Drawn Games
  2. Heavy elements by ramk13 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What struck me the most from reading about it is that enough heavy elements (Fe, Si, etc) were around at the time to form the planet. That was one of the main reasons it was thought that planets couldn't have formed that early - you only had light gases around. So apparently it doesn't take a few billions years of fusion to get enough solid material for a planet. I wonder what other changes this will bring about in terms of the search-for-life campaign. The window just got a little bigger.

  3. Re:universe age by Valar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You judge the age of fairly close objects, using nuclear models, compare with red shifts. Then you look at the red shift of far away objects and try to extrapolate age, IIRC.

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    Crudely Drawn Games
  4. I wonder... by mikeophile · · Score: 4, Interesting
    How many civilizations have looked at Sol with their telescopes and determined the presence of Jupiter from our star's wobble?

    Would they conclude that it was unlikely that life could evolve in this system for one reason or another based upon their own standards?

    1. Re:I wonder... by mikeophile · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I think you've missed the point.

      There are several planetary systems that we have discovered that have been ruled out as having evolved life as we know it.

      The system in the article is a prime example.

      The x-ray emissions from the pulsar would prevent life as we know it from ever starting, much less evolving.

      Those are our standards. We have only ourselves as a basis for comparison.

      Perhaps there are very alien forms of intelligent life that would not consider our system capable of supporting biology because we lack a strong x-ray source.

  5. Re:Heavy elements and eating into the timeframe by nimblebrain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, they're begging the question somewhat, but it seems true that globular clusters metal deficient. Jupiter's atmosphere is 82% hydrogen, 14% helium and only a trace of heavier elements. Who knows what goes on at the core, but that would seem to indicate that planets don't need rock to form.

    That said, if we found some moons around it somehow at some point in the future, there would be a lot of questions that need answering.

    Is it worrying anyone else, though, how thoroughly we're cutting in to the upper estimate of the age of the universe according to Big Bang Theory? Prior guesses on the age of the universe in BBT were in the 9-12 billion range.

    Invoking tweaks on inflation theory and 'anti-gravity' via the cosmological constant, the upper limit has been moved up to 15 billion years. Now here we are with a planet... a close planet (all things considered, 7200 light years isn't that far away on a grand scale :), that's 13 billion years old plus star and cluster formation time, and some of the other observations from the furthest visible reaches coming back from ye olde Hubble... how much further can we cut into this without jeopardizing the 15 billion year estimate?

    Something to consider...

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    Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers :)