THERE IS A STAR THAT'S OLDER THAN THE UNIVERSE

Methuselah Star (HD 140283) 

WMAP, ESA/Planck (13.723-13.799 Billion Years)

Planck Satellite (Artwork)

The European Space Agency (ESA) managed a space observatory named Planck between 2009-2013. Planck analyzed the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background with small angular resolution. But you don't have to understand any of that, though, because here's the highlight: In 2018, the project's final data was released, and one conclusion was that the Universe is between 13.723-13.799 billion Earth-years old. The scientists could not be more precise because, well, there was no Universe at the time, and that means there were no birth certificates either. And other reasons. Still, the number was similar to the guesstimate of 13.772 billion that the team of NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) (2001-2010) made in 2012, after analyzing related data.

Cornell/ACT (13.77 Billion Years)

However, because scientists will be scientists, someone needed to confirm the ESA and NASA conclusions -- perhaps the amount of data collected over a cumulative 13 years, which took at least a total of 7 years to interpret, just was not enough. So, Cornell University collaborated with the National Science Foundation's Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile to measure the cosmic microwave thingy and concluded in 2020 that the Universe is 13.77 billion Earth-years old, close enough to the other estimates.

So, rounding up the number, we all agree (right?) that the Universe has been around for about 13.8 billion orbits of the Earth around the Sun -- even though there was no Earth and no Sun for most of that time. If so, then we have an anomaly that won't go away.

Methuselah Star/HD 140283 (14.27-16 Billion Years)

About 190 light-years away from Earth is a star that is commonly referred to as Methuselah (although it was born with the snappy name HD 140283). It has been known for over 100 years, and unlike most stars, it is traveling toward Earth rather than away from it, and it's doing so at 1.3 million kph (800,000 mph). But the really weird thing about this star is that it is apparently older than the Universe. Yeah. Using EPA's Hipparcos satellite, in 2000, scientists estimated its age at 16 billion years. However, because scientists will be scientists, someone needed to confirm the Hipparcos conclusion. So, a team led by scientists at Pennsylvania State University analyzed data gathered between 2003-2011 from the Fine Guidance Sensors of the Hubble Space Telescope, and concluded that Methuselah is "only" 14.46 billion years old. Their ecstatic high-fives were weakened when someone pointed out that the Universe still is "only" 13.77 billion years old -- approximately 690 million years younger than the star.

The team reconvened, and in 2014 nudged the star's age down to 14.27 billion years. No high-fives at all. To account for the pesky discrepancy, still at half a billion years, they slapped a 800-million-year "margin of error" footnote on the estimate -- a 11.6% overall margin that is an unusually huge gap. Even if that disingenuous hack is accurate, now they have to explain how a star created at the time of the Big Bang (stars weren't even created for at least another 100 million years after the BB) is now only 190 Light-Years from Earth. Some scientists are blaming the discrepancies on the influence of Dark Energy. Since no one actually knows what Dark Energy is, making it the villain is a viable solution that is difficult to disprove.

The Methuselah Star will arrive near Earth in about 159,000 years, so it is expected that scientists can request some proper age ID at that time and this mystery will be resolved once and for all. Well, until another scientist feels the need to confirm it.

WMAP Satellite

BREAKING NEWS:

As recently as May 2021, in an article published by the American Astronomical Society, yet another scientific team (led by Jianling Tang and Meridith Joyce) came up with yet another age for the Methuselah star: 11.96-12.06 billion years. They used different data: 1D stellar evolutionary tracks computed with Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics software, and they varied "as inputs the mass, initial composition, and convective mixing length, αMLT, which parameterizes the efficiency of energy transport by convection in the low-mass star's outer envelope according to the Mixing Length Theory (MLT) formalism." They also used the most recent interferometry measurements from the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy. Since I have no idea what any of that means, I leave it to the next team of scientists to successfully dispute it. However, they admitted to "excluding modeling variance from the uncertainties" (about which I am uncertain regarding its meaning), so I think you'll agree that such shenanigans render the whole conclusion rather sketchy.