Star almost as old as the Universe

[Zeonix]

Employing techniques similar to those used to date archeological remains here on Earth, scientists have learned that a metal-poor star in our Milky Way called HE 1523 is 13.2 billion years old-just slightly younger than 13.7 billion year age of the universe. Our solar system is estimated to be only about 4.6 billion years old.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070510_oldest_star.html

According to the article, while HE 1523 is certainly old, it isn't the oldest.

 

[ZeroNightmare]

theres some pretty interesting stuff on that website.

 

[+HottsaucE@+]

space and deep water realy interests me. this is some realy interesting iformation.

 

[Jariroth]

I'm wondering...How do they know how old it is? How can they possibly know something like that?

 

[+HottsaucE@+]

I'm wondering...How do they know how old it is? How can they possibly know something like that?

i agree, they have no scientific proof, also i think this has been posted in another thread but its very amazing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnbuhjliCKA&mode=related&search=

 

[vinay87]

Space is beautiful. Space is endless.

wtf. Everything has an end.
Except the reign of the nix.

 

[Mr.Lukyas]

Boy this is an intresting site. Intresting informations about that star...

 

[Dokutayuu]

I'm wondering...How do they know how old it is? How can they possibly know something like that?

Maybe they checked it's birth certificate...

or judging by how large it is and by the colour, I guess they can only estimate... I find space and stars so interesting... If only Outlaw Star were real...

P.S Long live Nixon! (I refuse to admit his death, along with Elvis's, Bob Marley's, Syd Barrett and Disco!)

 

[vinay87]

P.S Long live Nixon! (I refuse to admit his death, along with Elvis's, Bob Marley's, Syd Barrett and Disco!)

I was talking about Zeonix. O_0 besides, Elvis aint dead. He lives in Burger King.

 

[Zeonix]

i agree, they have no scientific proof, also i think this has been posted in another thread but its very amazing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnbuhjliCKA&mode=related&search=

...

How about reading the article before saying something ridiculous? There's an entire part devoted to explaining how they are able to determine the age of a celestial object.

 

[Dokutayuu]

I was talking about Zeonix. O_0 besides, Elvis aint dead. He lives in Burger King.

So was I, you can never be sure which President he is... I swear Elvis prefered KFP (Kentucky Fried Possum)

Any idea what the thing's fusing? Being old it must be pretty low on hydrogen and helium after all these years... It would have to be quite small to last that long. Big stars only manage a few million years until becoming the world's largest fireworks.

 

[Optimus Prime]

I'm wondering...How do they know how old it is? How can they possibly know something like that?

"If scientists know an element's half life and the amount of the original sample, they can estimate an object's age based on how much of the element is left. Uranium and thorium have half-lives of 4.7 billion years and 14 billion years, respectively."

Ta-dah.

 

[DaRkOwNs]

son of a *****, i coulda swore i already posted that...

anyway yeah, by checking the half-life of the element (meaning they observe how much of the element has faded from radioactive to its metallic form which is different for each radiactive element) you can see how long the element has been around

example of how they do this:
uranium-238 has a halflife of about 4 billion years, by checking the difference in elements (it decays into plutonium) they can calculate the ratio and tell the time. simply put if it was half plutonium and half uranium it would be 2 billion years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-238

i love science...

 

[Adaptus]

I know there'll be some people here thinking "Wait, half life? ..Half-Life? Err.. Wow."

 

[+HottsaucE@+]

im thinking wtf? im amazed.

 

[Keiha]

Interesting, I didn't think it possible to find out the age of things like the Universe, how do they figure out the age of the entire Universe anyways?

 

[Zeonix]

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/age.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/age_universe_030103.html
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/mysteries_l1/age.html