Ancient Star Found, Estimated at 13.2 Billion Years Old 377
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.'"
I wonder (Score:1, Interesting)
Heavy elements? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:"Right around the same time" (Score:3, Interesting)
Heavy elements? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:I wonder (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Heavy elements? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I wonder (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.
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:the creationists will not like this (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
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".
Re:Heavy elements? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the creationists will not like this (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:So ummmm what happens... (Score:2, Interesting)
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/ [wikipedia.org] and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_Universe_Theo