The Elder Suns Expedition - a journey to find the Milky Way's most ancient stars

Jaiotu

Jaiotu
This is very much an expedition in very, very early pre-planning stages as of right now. I should be able to come back and update this OP later as the expedition takes shape.

The object of the mission will be to locate Population II and Population III stars. These are stars that existed before the formation of the Milky Way itself and whose ages are well above the 13 billion year figure. An example would be HD 140283*, also known as the "Methuselah" Star which has an estimated age of 13.6 to 14.4 billion years.

The nature of this expedition means that it won't be tied to a specific route or destination though we might work up a core route for those who want to travel in a group convoy. This means that the Elder Suns Expedition can piggyback on other expeditions and also be open to participation by Commanders who are lone-wolf exploring the galaxy.

One of the immediate goals of the expedition will be to try and determine if there are any hints in the galaxy map that would help to identify these ancient stars prior to actually jumping in and scanning them. We'll also be working toward determining the population distribution of these ancient stars throughout the galaxy.

One of the things we'll be looking at is reports that some of the stars in the galaxy appear to be older then the universe itself. PLAA EURK KC-U B46-0 has a reported age of 18.47 billion years ... much older then the estimated 13.8 billion year age of the universe. We'll be asking questions about how such a star can exist and if external forces could "age" a star prematurely so that it's measurable age appears older then it's actual age or if these stars could be evidence of our universe interacting with an older parallel universe.

This post will be updated as the project begins to take shape.

*According to this bug report the age of HD 140283 is wrong. I haven't visited the star myself to verify the age.
 

Jackie Silver

Jackie Silver
At some stage (around patch 1.3 I think) there was a change to all star's ages which addressed the stars that were older than the age of the universe, so I would treat all of the older reports of ancient stars with suspicion until they are rechecked. It would be very interesting to know if any of the antiques survived with their age intact, and also to know if any are still found among proc-gen stars.

I would love to get a good idea of the distribution of star system age across the Forge galaxy. It's not the sort of thing that's easy to pull from pre-existing data because of bias in what people survey...

Thumbs up for the idea! I would say that I'd join, but every time I say that for expeditions (Silly Ships say) I end up getting sidetracked to other things... :( :)
 

VR tazbert

VR tazbert
Souds interesting, if it happens! I am currently heading back to the bubble with no bar snacks, so should be ready in a week or 3!
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Around the western rim, you can find several red dwarfs at >13 MY - I'm now looking for a 14 MY one...

If I've scanned it, it should be in the EDSM data base.
 
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Edelgard von Rhein

E
I like the way that this can overlap with other expeditions or independent exploration. I would be happy to contribute if I find any systems ~13GYr. I'm not sure that building a list of very old stars would, by itself, provide what you're looking for, though.
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If the objective is at least partly to assess the distribution of older stars, then I would think that one of the things that you would need to do would be to conduct surveys of different star types in different sectors. In Synuefe sector e.g. (where the Guardians Ruins are mostly found) you might scan a statistically significant number of stars (at least 30) of each main sequence type (including brown dwarfs but not the younger classes of T Tauri and OAB stars) and construct a graph showing the age distribution for each spectral type. That will tell you if that sector is a good place to find very old stars. There will probably not be enough of the rare star types (e.g. carbon, s stars etc.) in any one sector but you could probably just record the numbers of them that you find in each sector. You can then repeat the process for adjacent sectors and those in other parts of the galaxy to get a picture of age distributions.
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In real life, there should be older populations in the Galactic Bulge and newer populations along the spiral arms, as this is where more recent star formation is taking place. Also, in real life, the oldest stars are 'halo stars' and these are found outside the Galactic Plane, as the name implies, so perhaps looking far above/below the Galactic Plane might reveal some of these stars.
 
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Qohen Leth

Qohen Leth
Well here's what I'm working on right now.

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Jaiotu

Jaiotu
optimal_909 said:
Interesting stuff, I've seen the PBS video about this lately.

Is there any assumption where to look for them - in the core or at the fringes?
Click to expand...

Well... here's the thing: We don't have a specific search area. We're basically exploring the algorithms used by Stellar Forge. Maybe we'll find that more Methuselah stars exist in certain areas of space rather than others. The great thing is that this particular project can be undertaken by anyone anywhere in the galaxy. You'll still be able to participate with other expeditions or simply head out lone wolf style. I'm really hopeful that we can piggyback on the next Distant Worlds expedition.
 

Traveller_GG

Traveller_GG
Good thing I'd seen this thread as I've found a star just over 13 billion years old less than 5kly from the bubble. I can copy the details if you're interested?
 

Jaiotu

Jaiotu
Please do! I'm working on getting my info together to properly promote this and will include a reporting tool soon ... but for now if you want to post the info into the thread that would be awesome!
 
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