Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

The Greatest Cosmic Puzzle

#1
Secular Sanity Offline
Astronomers Find Stars That Appear Older Than the Universe

The oldest stars we've found in the Universe are nearly pristine, where almost 100% of what makes them up is the hydrogen and helium left over from the Big Bang. They come in at over 13 billion years old, with the oldest at 14.5 billion. And this is a big problem, because the Universe itself is only 13.8 billion years old.

You can't very well have a star that's older than the Universe itself; that would imply that the star existed before the Big Bang ever happened! Yet the Big Bang was the origin of the Universe as-we-know-it, where all the matter, energy, neutrinos, photons, antimatter, dark matter and even dark energy originated. Everything contained in our observable Universe came from that event, and everything we perceive today can be traced back to that origin in time. So the simplest explanation, that there are stars predating the Universe, must be ruled out.

***

Regardless of what the resolution is, this is an important and extremely valuable situation for a scientist to be in. The stars themselves should place a lower limit on the age of the Universe; the Universe itself ought to be older. That this isn't what we're seeing with absolute certainty creates a beautiful tension that may well prove to be an omen of extraordinary scientific advance. Whether we learn something new about stars and how they live, evolve, and die; whether we learn something new about the Universe's age; or whether there's a third factor that's responsible for this misunderstanding, there's the opportunity to improve our scientific understanding of the Universe. In the end, that's the greatest situation any curious individual can hope to find themselves in. What seems like an impossibility might prove to be something even more valuable: a chance to push our knowledge of how the Universe works into hitherto unknown frontiers.
Reply
#2
Zinjanthropos Offline
I thought the big mystery is why there appears to be more matter than antimatter in the universe.

I still stand by my gut feeling that there's crucial evidence required to nail the BB down but it has long since disappeared. Perhaps an earlier civilization had all the goods to work with, wrote it all down, then either left it on a planet or fired it off into space for someone to stumble upon.  Wink
Reply
#3
C C Offline
(Sep 11, 2017 04:45 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [...] So the simplest explanation, that there are stars predating the Universe, must be ruled out. [...] In the end, that's the greatest situation any curious individual can hope to find themselves in. What seems like an impossibility might prove to be something even more valuable: a chance to push our knowledge of how the Universe works into hitherto unknown frontiers.

If Siegel's confidence in those stars not predating the Universe should turn out to be precipitous after all, not sure [what] would be precognitively available in speculation land as a solution. The various cyclic models don't seem to sport any conditions that would allow stars or remnant regions from a prior recurrence to survive. Even Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology only entertains "the possibility of transmission of information from pre-Big Bang aeon to ours via the cosmic microwave background radiation" (whether that's via black holes colliding or deliberate information panspermia).

The Big Bang was not the origin of the universe ...” .Sir Roger Penrose
https://youtu.be/dA1_yYOoGtM

Cyclic model
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_model

Big Bounce
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce


EDIT: It should also be unlikely, impossible, or against some school of thought's canon for bumping into a "parallel universe" to inject some of its older stars or turf into ours.

Scientists May Have Just Discovered a Parallel Universe Leaking Into Ours
http://upriser.com/posts/scientists-may-...-into-ours

- - -
Reply
#4
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Sep 12, 2017 02:53 PM)C C Wrote:
(Sep 11, 2017 04:45 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [...] So the simplest explanation, that there are stars predating the Universe, must be ruled out. [...] In the end, that's the greatest situation any curious individual can hope to find themselves in. What seems like an impossibility might prove to be something even more valuable: a chance to push our knowledge of how the Universe works into hitherto unknown frontiers.

If Siegel's confidence in those stars not predating the Universe should turn out to be precipitous after all, not sure would be precognitively available in speculation land as a solution. The various cyclic models don't seem to sport any conditions that would allow stars or remnant regions from a prior recurrence to survive. Even Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology only entertains "the possibility of transmission of information from pre-Big Bang aeon to ours via the cosmic microwave background radiation" (whether that's via black holes colliding or deliberate information panspermia).

The Big Bang was not the origin of the universe ...” .Sir Roger Penrose
https://youtu.be/dA1_yYOoGtM

Cyclic model
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_model

Big Bounce
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce

- - -

Quote:conditions that would allow stars or remnant regions from a prior recurrence to survive. 

I've often thought of such things. Not saying the universe is the result of an explosion but a star has only to reach a critical stage before ka-boom. So many other things are similar in nature, there's only a minimum limit required before action begins.
Reply
#5
Secular Sanity Offline
(Sep 11, 2017 07:01 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: I thought the big mystery is why there appears to be more matter than antimatter in the universe.

I still stand by my gut feeling that there's crucial evidence required to nail the BB down but it has long since disappeared. Perhaps an earlier civilization had all the goods to work with, wrote it all down, then either left it on a planet or fired it off into space for someone to stumble upon.  Wink

I thought it was dark matter, but what do I know.

Interestingly, scientists at NASA have suggested a possible link between primordial black holes and dark matter.[source]

I’m not smart enough to theorize, much less have a gut feeling, but if I was forced to pull a rabbit out of my hat, I’d go with a gravivector force.  Maybe the slight repulsion gives matter the upper hand.  If antimatter falls faster than matter, colliding with matter…then ka-BOOM!

Quote:Based on what we currently know, we would expect that the only significant force acting on a piece of falling antimatter is gravity; by the equivalence principle, this should make antimatter fall with the same acceleration as ordinary matter.  However, some theories predict new, as yet unseen forces: these forces would make antimatter fall differently than matter.  But in these theories, antimatter always falls slightly faster than matter; antimatter never falls up.  This is because the only force that would treat matter and antimatter differently would be a vector force (mediated by the hypothetical gravivector boson).  Vector forces (like electromagnetism) repel likes and attract opposites, so a gravivector force would pull antimatter down toward the matter-dominated Earth, while giving matter a slight upward push. [1][2]

(Sep 12, 2017 02:53 PM)C C Wrote: If Siegel's confidence in those stars not predating the Universe should turn out to be precipitous after all, not sure would be precognitively available in speculation land as a solution.

Yeah, he's confident alright. Confident enough to wear a kilt. Too bad he doesn't have enough hair for a man bun. They're starting to grow on me. Wink

Uncertainties in the stellar parameters and chemical composition, especially the oxygen content, now contribute more to the error budget for the age of HD 140283 than does its distance, increasing the total uncertainty to about ±0.8 Gyr. Within the errors, the age of HD 140283 does not conflict with the age of the Universe, 13.77 ± 0.06 Gyr, based on the microwave background and Hubble constant, but it must have formed soon after the big bang. [source]
Reply
#6
Zinjanthropos Offline
Quote:I’m not smart enough to theorize, much less have a gut feeling,

lol

Anyways, I need the term gravitational attraction explained. I mean is it like a magnetic attraction or not really an attraction at all except that because mass distorts space there is a tendency for all other less massive matter that distorts space to change their paths by accommodating the distortion.
Reply
#7
Secular Sanity Offline
(Sep 12, 2017 05:59 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Anyways, I need the term gravitational attraction explained. I mean is it like a magnetic attraction or not really an attraction at all except that because mass distorts space there is a tendency for all other less massive matter that distorts space to change their paths by accommodating the distortion.

They’re particle interactions.

In theoretical physics, the gravivector with spin-1 and graviscalar with spin-0 are hypothetical particles that emerge as excitation of the metric tensor.

The gravivector force is repulsive for matter-matter interactions and attractive for matter-antimatter interactions. The graviscalar force is always attractive.
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Newly discovered cosmic megastructure challenges theories of the universe C C 3 69 Jan 13, 2024 12:26 PM
Last Post: stryder
  Research Unexpected cosmic clumping could disprove our best understanding of the universe C C 0 54 Dec 26, 2023 10:38 PM
Last Post: C C
  Extra-long blasts challenge theories of cosmic cataclysms + Cosmic nuclear fission C C 0 62 Dec 12, 2023 07:05 PM
Last Post: C C
  Article We may have found evidence of a cosmic string -- a crease in the universe C C 0 71 Sep 29, 2023 08:51 PM
Last Post: C C
  Article Starship & new astrophysics + Was Higgs field responsible for cosmic inflation? C C 0 60 Apr 18, 2023 02:43 PM
Last Post: C C
  Cosmic Calendar - From the Big Bang to Today Yazata 1 75 Jun 16, 2022 03:45 AM
Last Post: Kornee
  Did cosmic inflation cause the Big Bang? + Lunar history changed + Startless universe C C 0 85 Oct 11, 2021 03:40 PM
Last Post: C C
  Aromatic molecules detected in interstellar cloud + X-rays from Uranus + Cosmic chasm C C 1 195 Apr 6, 2021 06:07 PM
Last Post: Ostronomos
  Not aliens but mysterious ORCs + A new cosmic tension: The universe might be too thin C C 0 109 Sep 11, 2020 12:15 AM
Last Post: C C
  Our cosmic horizon is both unreachable & closer than ever C C 1 135 Aug 9, 2020 06:38 PM
Last Post: Syne



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)