an Impossible star found a "13 billion year old relic" from the past

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of European astronomers has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to track down a star in the Milky Way that many thought was impossible. They discovered that this star is composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with only remarkably small amounts of other chemical elements in it. This intriguing composition places it in the "forbidden zone" of a widely accepted theory of star formation, meaning that it should never have come into existence in the first place. The results will appear in the 1 September 2011 issue of the journal Nature.

this is strange does anyone know how weird this is?

The researchers also point out that this freakish star is probably not unique. “We have identified several more candidate stars that might have metal levels similar to, or even lower than, those in SDSS J102915+172927. We are now planning to observe them with the VLT to see if this is the case,” concludes Caffau.

link to source

i will ask the questions,
how can the current understanding of cosmology explain this star?
it should not have had time to condence under the current theories of gravity star formation and have the elements that it does,

do our star formation timelines need "tweeking" or is this too far and too old and too light in elements?



xploder

Does this effect the current "known" age of the MILKY WAY?

There is so much we do not know about universe, and not even planet Earth. Things are way too different than what they appear to be.

Originally posted by XPLodER

i will ask the questions,
how can the current understanding of cosmology explain this star?
it should not have had time to condence under the current theories of gravity star formation and have the elements that it does,

xploder

edit on 31-8-2011 by XPLodER because: add pic

I wonder if this story and ones like it don't offer a real basis to question much of what we assume we know about the Universe around us. I know from reading that the Earth's atmosphere had been a real issue for accurate measurements and readings prior to computers and the ability to factor out the distortion. I can't help think about the Heliosphere that Voyager 1 and 2 are still crossing. Could it be...I mean, is it POSSIBLE...that this "bubble" our Solar System seems to exist in could have a simmilar distorting effect, albeit on a much larger scale?

Perhaps we ought to follow Voyager 1 & 2 with a shotgun of modern probes in all directions from Earth to map this bubble...and see with modern technology, what space looks like from the other side of it?

reply to post by Ophiuchus 13


i must admit i have not yet thought through the implications of finding a star in this condition at the very edge of the observable universe,

imho
this would challenge,
early universe star formation,
what powers stars,
the age of the universe,
the time of reionization may have to be corrected,

i really havent got my head around this yet,

any comologists out there to explain?

xploder

reply to post by XPLodER


My bad I thought it was in local galaxy when I read

@A team of European astronomers has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to track down a star in the Milky Way that many thought was impossible.

I thought it was a local, please excuse.

reply to post by XPLodER


Maybe this guy was just an early bloomer, ahead of the curve in development. I can't really think of any other reason that a star would develop before all of the other ones did, maybe it just happened to be in an area of space that had lots of gas packed together which made for a quick formation.

But this kind of slaps down my theory:

A widely accepted theory predicts that stars like this, with low mass and extremely low quantities of metals, shouldn’t exist because the clouds of material from which they formed could never have condensed,”

Its not the star thats impossible,
Its what we think we know that is wrong !!

This could be one of the most significant scientific discoveries of my life time. While they will certainly do more research to determine it's age, it can throw a wrench in many long standing theroies of how the universe was created.

With trouble at CERN finding the higs and discoeries like this it shows we have a lot to learn and may have much of it wrong. Too bad US is letting it's scientific endeavors die to budget woes while we keep feeding the killing machine.

Does anyone else chuckle when they mention.

VERY LARGE TELESCOPE

Why do they always say that, its not as though we would raise a dissmissive eyebrow if they just said telescope. Maybe they dont think we'd believe them if the telescope is not large enough.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


hi wrabbit

i agree with you, and if new propusion systems are used the travel time can be cut down,
i have written a thread about a SDO observatory to view the heliosphere from the out side and to calculate and optical or EM distortions as the craft travel away from earth.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

i do think we would get a surprise if were outside looking in
lol

xploder

Originally posted by Xeven
Too bad US is letting it's scientific endeavors die to budget woes while we keep feeding the killing machine.

Well, to be honest, the killing machine does a lot more for us than this kind of science. I mean, it's nice to know that the universe might be more than 13 billion years old, but what does that do for us, really? It don't put food on the table. It doesn't solve our economic woes. It doesn't employ anybody except a few scientists and teachers. Is the knowledge worth the cost of getting it? I don't know.

"widely accepted theory"

When it comes to science, everything that's taken as fact is in fact (ha puns are fun) just widely accepted theories.
Theories that are constantly changed and expanded on. To say that we know so much about how the universe was created/works to me seems ludicrous, as we are assuming that the whole universe is exactly as it is within our limited viewing frame.But how can you blame us?

Originally posted by Ophiuchus 13
reply to post by XPLodER

 

My bad I thought it was in local galaxy when I read

@A team of European astronomers has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to track down a star in the Milky Way that many thought was impossible.

I thought it was a local, please excuse.

i have re read the article,

At the centre of this picture is a very unremarkable looking faint star, too faint to be seen through all but the largest amateur telescopes. This ancient star, in the constellation of Leo (The Lion), is called SDSS J102915+172927 and has been found to have the lowest amount of elements heavier than helium of all stars yet studied. It has a mass smaller than that of the Sun and is probably more than 13 billion years old.

it is hard to determine if the star is too old and close to us or,
if the star is indeed at 13 billion light years,
i need the help of some members to clarify

xploder

reply to post by EnigmaAgent


yes! it's so unoriginal. it's like naming a city on the pacific ocean "pacific city".

i love threads like this, it amuses me how people tout the infallibility of science. "it's science, and therefore completely 100% right".

The star is obviously not impossible - the models are incorrect.

That's science. You find new information, you update your models.

More hydrogen and helium in a denser state than was expected. Perhaps the expansion of the Universe wasn't quite as fast as currently predicted, leaving denser accumulations of lighter elements.

Originally posted by Farnhold
There is so much we do not know about universe, and not even planet Earth. Things are way too different than what they appear to be.

Maybe there are things we are not meant to know?

How disappointing it would be if we eventually discovered that our universe is contained in nothing but a Giant Hadron Collider?

reply to post by Bob Sholtz

The star we have studied is extremely metal-poor, meaning it is very primitive. It could be one of the oldest stars ever found,” adds Lorenzo Monaco (ESO, Chile), also involved in the study.

same source as in the op,

ps thanks for the "owl" lol

and it is indeed strange,
i just love strange lol

xploder

Originally posted by Aeons
The star is obviously not impossible - the models are incorrect.

That's science. You find new information, you update your models.

More hydrogen and helium in a denser state than was expected. Perhaps the expansion of the Universe wasn't quite as fast as currently predicted, leaving denser accumulations of lighter elements.

edit on 2011/8/31 by Aeons because: (no reason given)

so are you in the tweek the current model camp?
because how can a star be a "nulclear" furnace if there are no heavey elements?

xploder

reply to post by XPLodER


how far must a model be tweaked before it's considered different?

i wonder what the electric universe theory would say about this. *starts researching*