Stellar age

Wolfman

Wolfman
So, I'm looking at a neutron star that is apparently 17,400 million years old. 'Hmmm' thinks I. Are we using the old UK style of age measurement? A billion = 1,000,000,000,000 (12 zeroes) or the new way where a billion = 1,000,000,000 (9 zeroes)? So I took a quick look at Sol which is 4,700 million years old. So by this age measurement our Universe is approximately 13,800 million years old.... My neutron star pre-dates the Universe by 3,600 million years.

Am I in error or do we need a little numerical tweak?
 

Aquamonkey

Aquamonkey
Wolfman said:
So, I'm looking at a neutron star that is apparently 17,400 million years old. 'Hmmm' thinks I. Are we using the old UK style of age measurement? A billion = 1,000,000,000,000 (12 zeroes) or the new way where a billion = 1,000,000,000 (9 zeroes)?
Click to expand...
The long scale and short scale make no difference here. A million is a million (1,000,000). It's only after million that they differ in naming conventions. 17.4 billion in short scale, milliard in long scale.
 
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carazvan

C
If you check out the exploration records you'd see the oldest stellar bodies found so far in ED are around 18.4k million years old so at least in this they differ from the current understanding of 13.7k million year old age for the universe.

That said google "Mathuselah star" which has an apparent age of 14.6k million years +/- 0.8k million years. Even if you go with the max minus that's still 100 million years older than our universe as we understand it.
 

Aquamonkey

Aquamonkey
carazvan said:
If you check out the exploration records you'd see the oldest stellar bodies found so far in ED are around 18.4k million years old so at least in this they differ from the current understanding of 13.7k million year old age for the universe.

That said google "Mathuselah star" which has an apparent age of 14.6k million years +/- 0.8k million years. Even if you go with the max minus that's still 100 million years older than our universe as we understand it.
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It's 14.46k million years not 14.6k million years. The 0.8k million year margin of error still puts it within the age of the universe (~13.798k million years).
 

carazvan

C
Aquamonkey said:
It's 14.46k million years not 14.6k million years. The 0.8k million year margin of error still puts it within the age of the universe (~13.798k million years).
Click to expand...

Must have been updated again. Previously it was 16k million years and then 14.6k now I guess it's 14.46k million years.
 

specialsymbol

specialsymbol
Wolfman said:
So, I'm looking at a neutron star that is apparently 17,400 million years old. 'Hmmm' thinks I. Are we using the old UK style of age measurement? A billion = 1,000,000,000,000 (12 zeroes) or the new way where a billion = 1,000,000,000 (9 zeroes)? So I took a quick look at Sol which is 4,700 million years old. So by this age measurement our Universe is approximately 13,800 million years old.... My neutron star pre-dates the Universe by 3,600 million years.

Am I in error or do we need a little numerical tweak?
Click to expand...

Even if they confused the financial billion (9 zeroes) with the proper billion (12 zeroes) it would be off...
 
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