The universe is a really strange place. We already know SO MUCH stuff, more than we ever thought we would know. However, all of it might still be barely scratching the surface.

We keep discovering phenomena and objects that defy our understanding. Take black holes for instance. We still don't know what happens after the event horizon of a black hole or at the centre of it.

Similarly, there's a star that seems like it is older than the universe itself! Obviously, that just doesn't make sense. How can something exceed the age of the universe itself.

But that's exactly what the measurements have told us. Despite scientists' best efforts we just can't arrive at a sensible age of this star. This has both annoyed as well as excited scientists as they continue on with their efforts to understand this bizarre development.

Methuselah

Nearly two decades ago, astrophysicists discovered a star that is now named HD 140283 or more popularly, Methuselah. At the time of discovery, the astrophysicists had no idea that it would annoy the hell out of them.

In the year 2000, scientists tried to establish the age of the star. They arrived at a figure that puzzled them. It appeared that the star was around 16 billion years old. This was just impossible as the very age of the universe itself is 13.8 billion years.

Also, stars began forming only hundreds of millions of years after the events of the big bang. This is also when they named it Methuselah, a reference ot the oldest character in the Bible.

Since then, many researchers have tried to measure the age of the star. Until now, it as been de-aged to about 14.27 billion years. But this number is still older than the universe's age. On wikipedia, the star's age is listed as 14.46 +- 0.8 billion years.

In the future, more precise measurements might reduce that number to finally something that makes sense. But there is something more to the story. According to a recent research, the age of the universe might actually be just 11.4 billion years. If this is established as the truth, it will raise more headaches for scientists trying to age Methuselah!

There's A Star Out There That Appears Older Than The Universe

Methuselah