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Oldest Known Star In the Universe Discovered
Zothecula writes "A team of astronomers at The Australian National University working on a five-year project to produce the first comprehensive digital survey of the southern sky has discovered the oldest known star in the Universe. The star dates back 13.7 billion years, only shortly after the Big Bang itself. It's also nearby (at least, from a cosmological perspective) — about 6,000 light-years away. The star is notable for the very small amount of iron it contains (abstract). The lead researcher, Stefan Keller, said, 'To make a star like our Sun, you take the basic ingredients of hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang and add an enormous amount of iron – the equivalent of about 1,000 times the Earth's mass. To make this ancient star, you need no more than an Australia-sized asteroid of iron and lots of carbon. It's a very different recipe that tells us a lot about the nature of the first stars and how they died.'"
I thought William Shatner was the oldest star.
Cheese and rice, fella, I'd rather read a frostie piss or a betabitch post that your excrement.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
According to TFA this star itself was likely born from the death of a genuinely primordial star (which would have started with almost nothing by hydrogen and helium). One of the upshots of this work is that some primordial stars may have produced much less iron than some models have suggested which could explain some discrepancies in the observed isotopic ratios in some old stars. According to the actual article (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12990.html which may be behind a paywall) this star has an apparent visual magnitude of 14.7. This puts this star just in the limits of amateur observations. Charon has an apparent magnitude of around 15.5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_(moon) and that's been successfully imaged by amateurs (larger apparent magnitude means dimmer because astronomers are silly) http://www.universetoday.com/20351/charon-imaged-by-amateur-astronomers/ , so this star could be looked at by a dedicated amateur in the southern hemisphere.
The star is notable for the very small amount of iron it contains (abstract). The lead researcher, Stefan Keller, said..
ISWYDT
There is a planet circling it. It's name is Z'ha'dum. Where the First One lives.
The more i read stories like this, more i realize there is so much more I would like to know. Too many books not enough time lol...
goatse
If he is a lead researcher, what does he know about iron? I found in my old astronomy textbook a list of the elements that make-up the top 99.99997% of the mass of the sun. Lead is not in that list. Why have a lead expert involved instead of an iron researcher involved? The reason we're interested in this star is because of the low mass of iron, not lead.
You forget, the Flying Spaghetti Monster reaches out his noodly appendage and changes the researchers maths.
You know, so us edumerkated folk don't get confused.
NObody alive on earth today knows how old the universe is. That is a fact, Jack. It is hilarious to read difinitively how some claim to know.
I don't get it. If it so old it should be an ember by now, or does it still radiate ? If its only 6k ly from here then it still radiates right ? Also, if it is so old it should have 'expanded' away enormously.... or not. Its like finding a live dinosaur in your back yard.
Larger apparent magnitude means dimmer because magnitude is on a log scale, similar to pH is a log scale with a negative sign. Brightness = 2.512^(-Magnitude)
Oh, I thought this was another article about Cher or Bono...
Yes, I know that. But it is confusing to have the negative sign there. It would work just as well without it. In contrast pH which is concentration so if you want a positive number you need a negative sign. There's no really natural reason to have a negative sign for magnitude. It works fine but frequently confuses non-astronomy people. Really these are just arbitrary conventions and I was going for a funny aside. This is definitely not the only example of a system of measurement we use which is convenient largely for historical reasons.
the first stars don't have elements heavier elements generally thought to be created in supernovae, and large stars?
Who knew?
except this is so fucking basic astronomy knowledge they teach it to first year university students, with no knowledge of either astronomy or physics
Good grief charlie brown.
I mean, how do we know it's still there? It could have assploded yesterday and we won't know it for 6000 years.
We know.
another one.
http://www.thesunisiron.com/
After all, when you look at the Earth from space, you see mostly nitrogen, oxygen, and water vapor. It's always a problem to infer the interior of something from what you see on the outside (as in, you can't judge a book by its cover). The proposed LENR (Cold Fusion) physics, perhaps along with some notion of quantum decay of nuclei leading to outgassed hydrogen (my suggestion), could provide a way that a sun (or planet, including the Earth) made of mostly nickel and iron could produce a lot of internal heat from LENR.
BTW, scientists at MIT a quarter century later are now saying they have evidence of cold fusion:
http://cold-fusion.ca/cold-fus...
What other surprises lay in store for physics? Could it be "hot fusion" that does not exist most places we expect it, considering all the billions of dollars spent over decades that have failed to replicate it? :-)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Given the universe is 4500 years old this is a lie.
Actually, the creationists think the universe is 6000 years old, and this star is only 6000 LY away; so it doesn't prove anything one way or the other!!
it for example it use the word ÎÎá¦ÎÎÏ (doulos) and commonly translate it as bond servnat, but in reality were slave. It quite clearly change siome paragraph about horrible slavery of human being as being OK by bible time, to some benign "servant" job by our time. That alone should tell you a lot on not to trust *ANY* translation.
I'm finidng the title very misleading.
This is like walking into a supermarket and claiming you've found the oldest known twinkie.
Actually, the creationists think the universe is 6000 years old,
That is demonstrably false.
If you post a retraction, then you will regain some credibility. If you don't, I can't see how you are any better. Fuck Beta.
...that there's only a finite number of stars in the observable universe, so eventually they'll exhaustively find the oldest one of the lot, provided they can see it, and accurately verify its age, and tick off all the other candidates so as to ensure they have the correct answer. Then one has to ask what real-world survival problem will ever be aided by such research?
John_Chalisque
"......discovered the oldest known star in the Universe"
Thanks submitter for using a scientifically accurate description rather like in TFA where they say it's the oldest star in the Universe..
Wouldn't that be oldest unknown star in the universe discovered? One would think that if it was already known, it wouldn't be much of a discovery!
> Could the sun be mostly iron?
No, the sun is made of charcoal. This was clearly proved in the 1800s.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Of course, all these ages and distances assume one huge piece of information has always been constant: speed of light. What if it hasn't? Has anyone bothered to verify through these 6k light years that the light was always traveling at the same speed ?
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
I am SO sick of this "Big Bang" Stuff. Such utter tripe. I wonder if the Big bang cases global warming?
Isn't p negative log and therefore a different situation? At least in chem it's used a LOT, and not just with proton concentration.
It doesnt appear the brightness magnitude has any such identifier (though im sure your correct) and therefore at least a bit more confusing.
Artificially modified stars, if they exist, could be a way to detect extraterrestrial intelligence over truly vast distances.
Come on Slashdot. This is WEEKS old
Ok, so this star has very low metallicity and very old stars in general has low metallicity. That's one line of evidence, but all it -really- proves for this particular star is that it was made out of material with little metal in it. That may or may not have happened a very long time ago, and I'd like to see some explanations that confirms the age in some hopefully independent way. 6000 LY is practically in our back yard so it should be possible to take a really hard look at that star's neighbourhood to see if there are some clues there.
Interesting finding in any case.
"Could the sun be mostly iron?"
lol, no
"It's always a problem to infer the interior of something from what you see on the outside (as in, you can't judge a book by its cover)"
lol, no
"The proposed LENR (Cold Fusion) physics"
lol
"perhaps along with some notion of quantum decay of nuclei leading to outgassed hydrogen (my suggestion)"
lol
"could provide a way that a sun (or planet, including the Earth) made of mostly nickel and iron could produce a lot of internal heat from LENR."
lol, no
"BTW, scientists at MIT a quarter century later are now saying they have evidence of cold fusion:"
lol
"Could it be "hot fusion" that does not exist most places we expect it, considering all the billions of dollars spent over decades that have failed to replicate it?"
lol
Why would a very old star have very little iron in it?As light elements burn up you should be getting more and more heavier ones and the really heavy ones should fission back to iron that has the lowest fusion/fission potential. Because fusion/fission process converges to iron, a star that has been going on for a long time should have lots of it.
Or maybe the logic is that for a star to live very long it has to burn really slow and produces very little iron on its own? And as older universe has more iron in it younger stars should also have more of it when they ignite? So when you find a star that has very little iron in it it must have formed when universe has very little iron in it - ergo a long time ago in a far away galaxy?
Even better, if the universe is 6000 years old and this star is 6000 light years away, it must be from the beginning of the universe, which is exactly what these researchers discovered. Scientific proof of the bible!
Or maybe the logic is that for a star to live very long it has to burn really slow and produces very little iron on its own? And as older universe has more iron in it younger stars should also have more of it when they ignite? So when you find a star that has very little iron in it it must have formed when universe has very little iron in it - ergo a long time ago in a far away galaxy?
Bingo! Main sequence stars burns H to He but not much else.
Finally, we have proof that the creationists are wrong! Alert Mr. Ham!
According to John Ussher, the age of the Universe, as it currently stands, is 6,018 years, with Creation having occurred in 4004 BCE.
I, however, am an Atheist and the evidence for a 13.7ba Universe are sufficient for me.
Did this guy just rediscover Cher?
How come the oldest star in the Universe [hence a special one] happens to be located in our cosmic backyard?
It is indeed historical. The ancient Greeks divided the stars in 6 categories or magnitudes, magnitude 1 for the brightest stars to 6 for those barely visible with the naked eye. The mathematical formula only emerged later (1856 by Pogson) who defined the brightness scale by: a magnitude 1 star is 100 times brighter than a magnitude 6 star and Polaris is magnitude 2 which more or less fitted the ancient magnitude scale.
The age of the universe is according to Wikipedia
"In physical cosmology, the age of the universe is the time elapsed since the Big Bang. The best measurement of the age of the universe is 13.798±0.037 billion years ((13.798±0.037)×109 years or (4.354±0.012)×1017 seconds) within the Lambda-CDM concordance model.[1][2] The uncertainty of 37 million years has been obtained by the agreement of a number of scientific research projects, such as microwave background radiation measurements by the Planck satellite, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and other probes. Measurements of the cosmic background radiation give the cooling time of the universe since the Big Bang,[2] and measurements of the expansion rate of the universe can be used to calculate its approximate age by extrapolating backwards in time."
Still, the Sun rotates around the Milky Way center at a rate of every 240 million years; "Sun's Galactic rotation period 240 Myr (negative rotation)" according to Sparks 2007. Well, does that mean that the sun only has rotated around the Milky Way some 60 times (four times every billion years), since Big Bang? That sounds very little. Could the universe be much older than estimated?!
the Sun is only 4.5 billion years old; the Sun has made just over 18 laps.
Why do you think that "sounds little", and what physical measurement would imply older universe (we have several that point to about 14 billion years)
It does sound "very little"- but that's just a cool realisation to make. It's easy to think of everything in the universe being very permanent and enduring- and a little shocking to realise that even mega-scale structures of the universe are only fleeting or are quite young.
Considering how long the universe's processes are expected to go on for (star formation might be expected to end roughly 100 trillion years from now), we are currently existing in the extremely early days of the universe. The universe has existed for barely the tiniest fraction of a percentage of it's "life", and we're here living it, enjoying its extreme youth. That's very cool.
Finally you young whipper-snappers will learn something! Back in my day the stars were brighter and there were so many more. This old one should show you a thing or two.. now, get off my grass!
Actually, the creationists think the universe is 6000 years old,
That is demonstrably false.
If you post a retraction, then you will regain some credibility. If you don't, I can't see how you are any better
"On the other side, Mr. Ham was an advocate for the creation story. He said that God created the Earth in six days, and the Earth is only 6,000 years old..."
http://badgerherald.com/oped/2...
"On the Wednesday edition of his TV show, “The 700 Club,” Robertson indirectly implored Ham to put a sock in it, criticizing Ham’s view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old."
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/0...
"Bill Nye debates Creationist Ken Ham: The Earth is not 6,000 years old"
http://www.examiner.com/articl...
even after 100 trillion years, occassional collisions will make short lived stars if certain boundary conditions are met: carbon stars and helium-fusion stars. Sometimes brown dwarfs will collide to make a red dwarf star that can last 10 trillion years. so life may be possible at various times even after the universe's main star formation period ends. Interesting wikipedia articles about various models and speculations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
I haven't read the abstract, I'm sure the journal article is behind a paywall. The Idea here is that the star is old because it is "Metal" poor. In Stellar Evolution parlance "Metal" refers to anything heavier, any atom heavier, than helium. Most of the stars fuse hydrogen to heavier elements as they evolve. Evolution stops when the binding energy per nucleon reaches a maximun at around Fe or Ni. Most of the element abundances are greater up to mass = 56 and although heavier elements do exist, they are far less abundant on earth and in many places in the Univese because these heavy elements are not produced in ordinary nucleosynthesis. They are produced in supernovae explosions. Also, the star is nearby in cosmic terms. We are not discussing a star in a very distant galaxy whose light-travel time places it close to the formation of the first galaxies, rather this is a star in our own vicinity which has for some reason remained metal poor. I do not know where it is ploted in stellar evolution, spectral class.
The idea here is that the Big Bang produces the two most common elements, H and He in about 3:1 ratio and that when the primordial gas forms a star its evolution accounts for all of the rest or ordinary matter we see. The star being described here appears to be so metal poor that its composition must be close to the primordial ordinary matter in the Universe, the original H and He from the Big Bang and that little of the elements heavier than these were around when the star was formed, so the inference is that it is a vey old star.
One must be a little careful with this inference because it has been known for some time that stars in the Halo's of evolved galaxies like our own are lower in metals than the Sun and most so-called population III stars. This star could have had a complex history, maybe being one captured from another galaxy, and there are some uncertainties about stellar evolution rates for metal poor stars. Metal poor stars are less opaque to radiation and so may not evolve at the same rate as nearby stars or convect material fron their core regions to reveal what metals they were formed from or are able to make. There could be other factors than age that determine the life history of a metal poor star.
That doesn't explain how some creationists accounts for "the creationists". It is like if I said, "The black people rape and murder the good citizens of this country." It is false.
My concern is genuine because - AFAIK - many self-proclaimed creationits are simply that in a more figurative sense, not treating creation stories as literal or scientific truth. As you ought to know, the Roman Catholics don't follow the 6000 year doctrine and many are self-described creationists. The big bang theory came from a Catholic priest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
FWIW, I'm an atheist too but my first allegience is to the truth.
One other reason I think this sounds "very little" is that heavy elements need a successive series of star formations to be formed. So, 18 laps for the Sun since the dawn of the universe, as Patch86 mentioned, also sounds too few. No, I don't have any better hypothesis. Yet, perhaps we are seeing a logarithmically contracted time scale once we look back in time and that such a phenomenon produce these effects.
Sorry, it wasn't Patch86 but you iggymanz who made that reflection
Our Sun did not exist at the dawn of the Universe, the Universe has existed three times as long as the Sun has. The Sun and solar system are made of the remains of other stars that built up the heavy elements.