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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.
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...
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.
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.
Apparently some AC knows that nobody alive today knows how old the universe it. It is hilarious to read difinitively[sic] how s/he claims to know.
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)
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.
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!!
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.
No. The solar neutrino flux is almost precisely that which is proposed by models and this does let us check our models. We can also estimate the sun's density if it had an iron core. It would be much denser and it wouldn't have an easy way to prevent collapse. There's also no plausible model for anything remotely like this to form naturally. Those are just a few of the many problems with this suggestion. Thinking about ideas is good but please be aware that it is extremely unlikely that a single individual thinking on their own is going to come up with a serious problem in theories that withstood many empirical tests over the last 50 years, and even less likely to then come up with the correct hypothesis. Claiming that the sun is mostly iron isn't the same level as claiming that evolution hasn't happened, but it isn't that far off. At minimum, a glance at your website shows no predictions that would differ from standard. At minimum to be taking seriously you need to propose some test that can be done that will strongly differentiate your model from the standard explanation. Without that, there's little reason to pay attention.
...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
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.
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!
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.
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.
Hot fusion has been replicated many times on the surface of the Earth in: Hydrogen bombs (uncontrolled), Tokamaks, Stellerators, Z-pinch machines, Farnsworth fusors (in peoples backyard shed) and other devices. We have not managed to extract more energy from it than we put in, but we certainly replicated it.
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?!
We have recently nearly broken even with laser energy input to energy output of the fusion. What we haven't gotten yet is nearly breaking even with total energy input to total energy output, with the goal of a net extractable energy output for total energy input.
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.
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.
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.