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Ancient Star Found, Estimated at 13.2 Billion Years Old

Posted by Zonk on from the insert-your-mom-joke-here dept.

raguirre writes "An article on Physorg.org reports that a newly found star may be as old as the universe itself. Recent studies have concluded that the Big Bang occurred somewhere in the neighborhood of 13.7 Billion years ago. The star, a heavy-elements laden fossil labeled HE 1523-0901 on charts was probably born right around the same time; approximately 13.2 Billion years ago. 'Today, astronomer Anna Frebel of the the University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory and her colleagues have deduced the star's age based on the amounts of radioactive elements it contains compared to certain other "anchor" elements, specifically europium, osmium and iridium.'"

13 of 377 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    given an object like this, with a time reference to the big bang, the knowledge of the rate of expansion of the universe etc.. wonder if the origin of the big bang could be pinpointed.

    1. Re:I wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      This kind of extrapolation has already been done with galaxies. It shows that every part of the universe was denser in the past (and infinitely dense 13.7 billion years ago). The universe may have started as a point but today that point is everywhere.

    2. Re:I wonder by AbsoluteXyro · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Doubtful. All objects in the universe are moving away from each other. We know this because when we look up into the sky, everything is red shifted... which would seem to indicate that Earth is the center of the universe, but it is not.

      How is that possible? You can run a universal expansion experiment at home with a black magic marker and a balloon. First, blow up the balloon and draw a group of dots on it so that you can observe all the dots at once (don't draw dots on opposite sides of the balloon). Deflate the balloon. Now, choose a dot on the balloon, and watch it while you inflate the balloon. You will notice the dot remains stationary while all of the other dots move away from it. Deflate the balloon, choose another dot, and repeat the observation. You will see that this completely different spot also appears to remain stationary while all other dots move away from it. This is similar to what is happening with the expansion of the universe... and I would hazard a guess that such a mechanic makes pinpointing the origin nigh impossible.

    3. Re:I wonder by Dontgimmiethatlook · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ahh crap... Not good with HTML What I ment to say was "I believe that is what is refered to as the Big Rip Theory" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip

    4. Re:I wonder by zCyl · · Score: 4, Interesting

      wonder if the origin of the big bang could be pinpointed.

      If by "origin" you mean "point of origin", then we already have that answer. The big bang was not an explosion which occurred at one point in space, spewing matter and energy out everywhere. The big bang was a big explosion OF space, and spewed out a glob of space which began to expand, making points more distant from each other.

      So you cannot ask "where" the big bang occurred, because if you take all the points in space as far as can be seen, all of those points in space were at one single point at the moment of the big bang. So the best answer to "where" is "everywhere".
  2. Heavy elements? by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The star, a heavy-elements laden fossil labeled HE 1523-0901 on charts was probably born right around the same time; approximately 13.2 Billion years ago.

    I thought early stars had very few heavy elements because there had yet to be multiple generations of stars to produce such. Thus, where did the heavy elements come from?

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Heavy elements? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      or our estimate of the age of the universe could be wrong and this is just one of the oldest stars that 'still exists' in our vision, when in reality it's already using material from several generations of stars before it.

    2. Re:Heavy elements? by mdsolar · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What is interesting to me is that the Milky Way has stars of this age which formed before the universe reionized. Obviously something had to be happening for reionization to happen, but did the matter that formed the Milky Way have to be a part of it? More massive protogalaxies might have done the job and stars for the Milky Way formed latter. A solid date like this says that even a smaller body like the protoMilky Way was doing this kind of thing.

  3. Re:"Right around the same time" by VorpalEdge · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is astronomy. 500 million years is negligible if you're talking about the beginnings of the universe. :/ And if I remember correctly (it's been a while), conditions right after the big bang were such that stars could not form for a while. Can't remember much else then that, but this probably is one of the first stars the universe formed if their observations + math are correct.

  4. Heavy elements? by sakdoctor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I only had time to skim TFA, but it says this ancient star contains heavy elements (Heavier than iron). Since the fusion reaction that produces iron consumes energy, the heavy elements must have come from a different star.
    0.5 billion years seems quite quick for a few stars to go super nova, then condense into another star with the required heavy elements in.

  5. Re:the creationists will not like this by Darby · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In fact, if you could give hard evidence that god exists, I would convert to christianity immediately. But I won't hold my breath.

    Why would you convert to Christianity just because he proved god existed? Heck, just proving god exists creates more questions, the most obvious being which of the thousands or millions of proposed gods is it?

  6. Re:the creationists will not like this by Darby · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That is astonishing.

    What, your failure to understand basic logic?

    Personally I figure I was born without having an opinion on much of anything.

    Exactly. Were you born with a belief in god? No, then you were born an atheist.

    Until you either come up with the question on your own or somebody presents the question to you, it'd be insane to say that you already have a stance.

    You don't need a "stance" to be an atheist. You just need no belief in god. Like everybody is born and stays until they are brainwashed by abusive parents.

  7. Re:So ummmm what happens... by largesnike · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In short: it would be bad mmm-kay?

    What it would prove is that the big bang was not a singular event and that material from other big bangs has floated into our region. This sort of idea has been put forward by various string theorists and often in connection with p-branes.

    Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_Universe_Theor y/

    --
    "Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo