conflict of ages between stars and the universe?

Yesterday I was watching a video on the Big Bang in class. Now with the hubble as their eyes, scientists can see farther then ever before, establishing that the universe is a lot larger then originally percieved. Apparently a group that focuses on one type of rare star came across a star and estimated its date. But the date given is way to old. Older then the theorized date of the universe. I'm sorry for my vagueness and if my facts aren't totally straight. Anyone else want to comment on this?

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-chris

Maybe that star isn't from around here? Maybe it's of extra-dimensional origin?Or maybe the universe is a lot older than we thought? What are you getting at, "there's evidence that the universe is 14 billion years old, and evidence that it's 20 billion years old, and since it can't be both, it must only be 6,000 years old"?

You'd have to supply the dates the video gave. About 5 + years ago there was a lot of news about this problem -- that is, stars being older than the estimated age of the universe.I believe that this has been completely resolved. The oldest stars are in the 8 to 10 Gyr range and the universe is close to 13.7 Gyr (billion years) old. If your video has anything different we'd like to hear about it and like to get to the base sources.

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Common sense isn't

You are in violation of guidelines, by having started a completely new (albeit very simular) ID.I SUGGEST that you go back to using your old ID, and if you wish, start an alias per "Changing Your User Name to a New Alias".I'll leave it valid for now, however, the "messenjaH of oNe" ID will be suspended.We let him get away with it, but bro Ironman might also go to his old ID, and resume using it via an alias.You can gripe at the appropriate topic, link supplied below, but I'm going to draw a hard line on this one.Adminnemooseus

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This topic seems bogus.The problem used to be that stellar evolution models gave ages for globular cluster stars up to 18 billion years old and most cosmological estimates for the age of the universe were in the 12-16 billion year realm.This probably basically goes away with a Hubble Constant of approx. 72 km/s/Mpc.The oldest globular cluster stars drop to approx. 12 billion years old and so DO NOT conflict with cosmological (i.e. WMAP) results.

Actually I was given the ok by Percy??

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-chris< !--UE-->*My messenjaH account no longer works, Percy closed it and just allowed viewing for it I guess, but I find it weird he didn't mention the new feature, would have been alot easier.[This message has been edited by messenjaH of oNe, 01-15-2004][This message has been edited by messenjaH of oNe, 01-15-2004]

No one made that assumption other then yourself.

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-chris

Yeah, most likely. The video must be old, I'll ask my teacher if it's still a problem.

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-chris

How can they drop ages? You mean their calculations were wrong? 18 to 12 billion?

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-chris

They got more accurate data to put into the calculations, and the numbers that came out of the calculations changed when they changed the input data.[This message has been edited by JonF, 01-15-2004]

Because the distance scale we use changed substantially in the last 10 years or so. So the stars in globular clusters had their estimated distances change and thus their luminosities we calculated were different.The theoretical models then imply a smaller age than we previously thought.So what we thought was an 18 billion year old star turns out to be more like 12 billion years old.

HI,I can just imagaine what the creationists are thinking!'Maybe once you find the correct distance scale you will realise that the universe is closer to 6 000 years. I mean you have just wiped off 6 billion years in one swoop, maybe this time next year you will erase another 6 billion years.'You will have set a few wee hearts a flutter with this Eta Brian.

Brian raises a good point. Can the source of the error be described so as to understand whether future revision to 6000 years is a reasonable possibility?--Percy

No.I mean you can get variations from probably 10 billion to 20 billion by playing with the distance scale but nothing really outside those limits short of wholesale changes in the laws of physics or divine intervention and tomfoolery.

Aren't there at least two sources of changes to such numbers? In one case we might have had a calculation of the universes age of 15 billion years +/- 5 billon. When we get better information or models the error bars shrink. So we might go to 13 =/- 2 and then 13.7 +/- 0.2 for example. In each case the better numbers are within the error bars of previous ones. None of them were 'wrong' at all.In the other case, we do have a change to a model or basic data. The new results are not because of improved precision but are really a correction to wrong results and may well fall outside of the old error bars.Corrections within error bars due to better data will never take 15 +- 5 and make it less than 1. The other can do a lot but as noted we'd have to overturn all of physics to move the results so far.

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Common sense isn't