Looks kinda Alien, too.......
Posted on 05/11/2007 8:09:45 AM PDT by Red Badger
Long before our solar system formed and even before the Milky Way assumed its final spiral shape, a star slightly smaller than the Sun blazed into life in our galaxy, formed from the newly scattered remains of the first stars in the universe.
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.
The findings are detailed in the May 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal.
Chemical dating
Like other early stars, HE 1523 contains very few elements heavier than hydrogen or helium. But it does have some. In particular, it contains radioactive metals such as uranium and thorium, both of which have extremely long half-lives.
A radioactive element's half life is the time it takes for one half of the original sample to decay.
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.
"If you know how much there was in the first place-and I'm getting these numbers from theorists-then you take your measurements and off you go," explained study leader Anna Frebel of the University of Texas.
This same technique is used with a radioactive form of carbon, called carbon-14, to date fossils rocks and archeological remains.
The uranium and thorium in HE 1523 were probably leftover elements from first generation stars that exploded as supernovas and scattered their atomic ashes through space. Second generation stars like HE 1523 formed from those strewn elements.
The researchers obtained a high quality light signature of the star by observing it with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) for 7.5 hours. From the star's spectrum, the researchers calculated the amount of uranium and thorium it still contained.
Because the uranium and thorium were formed during the supernova explosion of another star, what the researchers really dated was the age of the supernova. But, as Frebel notes, "the time between the supernova and [the birth of HE 1523] is relatively short compared to the age of the star."
Not the oldest
Scientists are not sure how far away HE 1523 is located, but the star can be seen with the aid of a telescope from the Southern Hemisphere, Frebel said. It is currently a bloated red giant star, and nearing the end of its life, but should still be around for quite a while, she added.
While HE 1523 certainly ranks among the oldest stars in the Milky Way, it probably is not the oldest. "This star has a certain metallicity by which we measure its chemical primitiveness, but there are other stars out there that are even more primitive in their nature," Frebel told SPACE.com.
Scientists think the first stars in the universe formed between 30 and 150 million years after the Big Bang and were massive behemoths, with masses up to 200 times that of our Sun. Scientists think those stellar first born burned brightly and quickly, lasting only a few hundred million years before exhausting their fuels and winking out as black holes or exploding as supernovas.
"Massive stars have a much shorter life time than low mass stars," Frebel said. HE 1523 "is probably a 0.8 solar mass star, and that's why it can still survive until today."
Recent observations of a supernova 240 million-light years away suggests the explosive star deaths of early stars were fundamentally different from the supernovas of later stars, and that they lasted longer, burned brighter and were fueled by an exotic antimatter engine.
Looks kinda Alien, too.......
With the metals necessary for technological life.
Guillermo Gonzalez & Jay W Richards, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place In The Cosmos Is Designed For Discovery
It really is a beautiful universe.
It is kinda silly. If I have a kilogram of X and it’s half life is 14 billion years, then this mass was 2 kilograms then.......
I always get a good laugh out of those wacko creationists who think that the earth is only 5,000 years old. Boy, those ancient people like the Egyptians must have had a tough time fending off all those dinosaurs. LOL. And then there's the difference between Neanderthal, Cro-Magnan and modern man, but I wouldn't want to confuse the issue with facts, when fantasy stories like creationism work so well for some people. LOL.
You know the truth of the matter.
Two thousand years ago scientists followed a star and it led to Jesus Christ, as all things do.
Wise men still seek Him.
No, Nancy Peloopsi
I’d laugh but I actually know someone that believes that.
Well - it’s described as a “big, red, bloated star”, so that lends credence to your theory...
Ditto...
But then there's the cycle of mass extinction every 65M years, so any thing beyond the concept may be moot.
And there's always the possibility of a Shoemaker-Levy 9, or an Apophis ruining some people's day.
I suppose we, er, the Earth can be swallowed by a black hole, or not survive a galactic collision.
And let's not forget a massive GRB from a "close" supernova...
Word! Claiming the earth is only a few thousand years old denies reality. But more importantly, it attempts to bring God down to human level. God does NOT work on our timescale, He’s infinitely grander than that and His Work and Plans are way beyond our understanding. I wish that people would take note that often the greatest scientists (Newton, Einstein, Galileo) were quite devout. One can’t look at the grandeur of the Cosmos and not be moved spiritually. Well, Carl Sagan, maybe, but I think even he was; he just denied the feeling to himself.
Well said. Even if one accepts the 6,000 (?) age of the Earth as doctrine, that does not contradict the Earth being a couple billion years old. Here are two alternatives just off the top of my head:
(1) God's year (and day for that matter) is as long as he says it is. Nothing says that His time frame is the same as ours. In fact, an omnipotent God could exist in any time frame He wanted, associated with ours only to the degree and in the way He desires. This even has biblical support: Light (i.e., the Sun) wasn't created until the third day, so the first two days clearly were measured by something other than a day as seen by the Sun rising and setting.
(2) (My personal favorite) God created the world 6,000 years ago, but He created it old. Kind of like writing a backstory to a novel. Again, no problem at all for an omnipotent God.
The most likely reality is that the Earth was created several billion years ago. Those who transcribed the bible probably could not even come close to conceiving of a billion years, so the message was put in terms they could grasp.
Removing mass from the sun? That’s a new one on me. If mankind is around in millions of years I assume they’ll be able to adjust the orbit of the earth as the sun expands.
One of the podcasts I download is from the Hubble Site. Can't remember when, since I did d/l all the archives at the time, but I'm 99% sure that's where I heard it.
Moving the planet? Assuming it could be done, that's really going to mess up growing seasons, faking your age on ids and bios, what happens to "expires one year after date..."
I was thinking shrinking the Sun would require the planet shrinking it's orbit, too.
Expanding it would put it closer to the asteroid belt.
You and Obadiah need to work together to iron out the differences.
(Sorry for the late post...beautiful day here, so I played golf!)
If we can do that, we can move the planet to a more habitable orbit and simply adjust as the star adjusts.
Besides, there's a galaxy out there to be colonized.
If we can do that, we can move the planet to a more habitable orbit and simply adjust as the star adjusts.
Besides, there's a galaxy out there to be colonized.
So then PROVE it. My God people like you give christians a bad name for being stupid.
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