I'm mentioning this bit of cosmology as "on topic" simply because it shows how tenuous is "expert consensus" on the most important things in our Universe. We as an advanced society are far from having a complete knowledge of physics, contrary to belief in the Ivory Towers of academia.
This star's age is a real embarrassment for any putative Standard Model of Cosmology :-) and with implications for the Standard Model for Physics. Called the Methuselah star, aka HD 140283 - this object is actually in our galaxy, which makes it even more problematic since it close to home. Astronomers refined the star's age down to about 14.5 billion years (which is still older than the universe), from the original data showing 16 billion years old. In either event it is way older then the Milky Way - yet there it is - not too far away cosmologically speaking. The revision downward was a cop-out since the original estimate is based on techniques used for everything else. In fact, the star could be at least two billion years older than the Universe as a whole if most of our prior assumptions are correct. http://www.space.com/20114-oldest-star-hubble-telescope-images.html Now ... here is the interesting part if the age measurement techniques were to be correct. Say our Universe expands and collapses - on long very cycles. Can a "seed star" born at the end of the previous cycle, somehow survive the collapse and carry forward anything relevant (i.e. 'information') between cycles? This has definite implications going all the way to theology, no? Jones
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