Summary
An article on the space.com website describes a star near the constellation of Libra which appears to be up to 16 billion years old. Which would be quite a trick, considering that most astronomers figure that the Big Bang occurred only 13.8 billion years ago.
Nicknamed "Methuselah's Star", the star's official designation is HD 140283. It was first observed over a century ago, and it believed to be a red giant that originally was born in a dwarf galaxy which became merged with our own, resulting in an eccentric, wide galactic orbit. Obervations of the star by the Hubble Space Telescope to more accurately measure its distance and changing theories of stellar evolution has knocked the estimated age of Methuselah's Star down to 14 billion years which, given a 800 million year margin error, puts the star — just barely — within the estimated age of the Univers.
Source
Game and Story Use
- A star older than the universe itself? Looks prime real estate for some Precursor artifacts!
- When the Stars are Right, Great Cthulhu will Arise! How much you want to bet that is one of those stars?