 Wysłany: Pon 10:26, 28 Paź 2013 Temat postu: UNIVERSITY PARK |
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| Astronomers zero in on birth date of oldest known star
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., March 7 () -- Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope say they've taken a step closer to finding the birth date of a star that's been around for a very long time.The aging star, cataloged as HD 140283,[url=http://www.moncleroutleto.co.uk]moncler london[/url], lies 190.1 light-years away from Earth."We have found that this is the oldest known star with a well-determined age,[url=http://www.moncleroutleto.co.uk]moncler uk[/url]," said Howard Bond of Pennsylvania State University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.The star could be as old as 14.5 billion years, astronomers said, which is a bit of a puzzle since the calculated age of the universe is about 13.8 billion years.But it's a better estimate than previous observations that had put the star's age as old as 16 billion years, Bond said, a real dilemma for cosmologists."Maybe the cosmology is wrong, stellar physics is wrong or the star's distance is wrong,[url=http://www.pachasvip.com]hollister outlet[/url]," Bond said. "So we set out to refine the distance."The astronomers said the range of measurement uncertainty they encountered -- plus or minus 800 million years -- could lower the upper age limit, which would make the star unequivocally younger than the universe."Put all of those ingredients together and you get an age of 14.5 billion years,[url=http://www.pachasvip.com]abercrombie outlet[/url], [but] with a residual uncertainty that makes the star's age compatible with the age of the universe," Bond said. |
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