A Star Almost as Old as the Universe Found in Milky Way

[n2doc]

"This star likely is almost as old as the universe itself."
Anna Frebel, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Astronomers have discovered a relic from the early universe -- a star that may have been among the second generation of stars to form after the Big Bang. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, the star has a remarkably similar chemical make-up to the Milky Way's oldest stars. Its presence supports the theory that our galaxy underwent a "cannibal" phase, growing to its current size by swallowing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks.

Dwarf galaxies are small galaxies with just a few billion stars, compared to hundreds of billions in the Milky Way. In the "bottom-up model" of galaxy formation, large galaxies attained their size over billions of years by absorbing their smaller neighbors.

"If you watched a time-lapse movie of our galaxy, you would see a swarm of dwarf galaxies buzzing around it like bees around a beehive," explained Frebel. "Over time, those galaxies smashed together and mingled their stars to make one large galaxy -- the Milky Way."

more
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/04/a-star-as-old-as-the-universe-found-in-milky-way-a-galactic-mystery.html#more

[RandomThoughts]

1. bees buzzing around.

Is reference to a story about the purification of the wife of a Bible figure.

It was mentioned in this song already.

soldier music vid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-mDeBgQXeo


And if you think any of that has anything to do with the marriage of the couple in England, your an idiot. :rofl:

Think why you make that connection.

[damntexdem]

2. Wow, that part of the Milky Way must surely ...

be sour by now.

;-)

[DCKit]

3. That doesn't make any sense at all.

Every star has a limited lifespan, mostly determined by its size. Larger stars (which you might think would last longer) burn out faster because, due to the increased gravity, the fusion reaction takes place on a much faster timescale. Our own sun, as a medium sized star, is about halfway through its lifespan.

Unfortunately, you can't get much smaller than our sun and still have a mass large enough to coalesce, let alone begin fusion.

I'm not buying it.

They may be seeing some truly ancient stars from vast distances, but not within our own galaxy.

[pokerfan]

4. depends upon the type of star

It is believed that low mass red dwarfs, for example, can burn for trillions of years.

[Odin2005]

5. The lifetime of a minimal red dwarf (8% of the Sun's mass) is about a trillion years.

[Posteritatis]

6. Uhh, you certainly can

The sun's a pretty big star compared to the typical ones. The average star in the universe is considerably smaller than it is.

[Orsino]

7. Doesn't get around to saying how old.

Also seems to count Sculptor as in the Milky Way.