HD 140283, nicknamed the Methuselah star, is not known to be older than the universe. A famous 2013 estimate put its age at about 14.5 billion years—above the then-used universe estimate of 13.77 billion years—but the star’s uncertainty is large enough for the two ages to overlap. The apparent mismatch reflects the difficulty of dating a star, not evidence that it predates the Big Bang.
What is the Methuselah star?
HD 140283 is a nearby, fast-moving Population II subgiant in the constellation Libra. NASA gives its distance as 190.1 light-years (58.3 parsecs) and its coordinates as right ascension 15h 43m 03s.10, declination −10° 56′ 00″.60. Its heavy-element content is about 1/250 that of the Sun, according to NASA.
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That low metallicity is a clue to its history: the star formed when the gas between stars had been enriched by fewer earlier generations of stars. Its elongated, halo-like orbit is also consistent with an ancient stellar population and may point to an origin in a dwarf galaxy later accreted by the Milky Way.
How did it get an age older than the universe?
Stars do not come with directly measurable birth dates. Astronomers infer a star’s age by measuring properties such as its brightness, distance and chemical composition, then comparing them with models of how stars evolve. Small changes in those inputs can shift the estimated age.
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In a 2013 peer-reviewed study, researchers used a Hubble Fine Guidance Sensor parallax of 17.15 ± 0.14 milliarcseconds to improve the distance estimate. They compared the star with updated stellar-evolution models that included helium diffusion, revised nuclear reaction rates and enhanced oxygen abundance. For adopted abundances of [O/H] = −1.67 and [Fe/H] = −2.40, the parallax-only age estimate was 14.46 ± 0.31 billion years.
That ±0.31-billion-year figure accounts for the parallax uncertainty under the study’s adopted abundances. When uncertainties in the star’s composition and other stellar parameters were included, the total uncertainty grew to about ±0.8 billion years. NASA and ESA summarized the result as 14.5 ± 0.8 billion years.
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Why the estimate does not prove the star is older
The study compared HD 140283 with a universe age of 13.77 ± 0.06 billion years, the cosmological estimate used in that paper. The stellar estimate’s one-standard-deviation range is roughly 13.7 to 15.3 billion years, which includes 13.77 billion years. The ranges overlap, so the central value alone is not evidence of a contradiction.
The study concluded that, within the errors, HD 140283’s age did not conflict with the universe’s age, although it must have formed soon after the Big Bang. NASA astronomer Howard Bond described the result as compatible with the universe’s age once the remaining uncertainty was taken into account.
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What makes the age uncertain?
- Distance: A parallax measurement helps establish how far away the star is, which in turn informs its luminosity and age estimate. The Hubble measurement reduced the distance error compared with earlier Hipparcos data.
- Element abundances: Oxygen and iron affect how the star evolves in the models. The 2013 study found that composition contributed more to the uncertainty than distance after the improved parallax.
- Stellar physics: Choices about diffusion, nuclear reaction rates, convection and the mixture of elements alter model predictions and inferred ages.
- Model inputs and constraints: Stellar mass, radius and the adopted abundance mixture also matter. A 2024 tailored-abundance study reported materially different ages when it modeled element mixtures specifically for HD 140283; a solar-scaled mixture could produce an estimate around 14 billion years. That illustrates why no single headline figure should be treated as exact.
How to interpret the headline
“Older than the universe” is shorthand for a historical central estimate that exceeded the cosmological estimate then used—not a demonstrated fact about the star. A more accurate description is that HD 140283’s early age estimate appeared older than the universe, while its uncertainty reaches the universe’s age. The specific estimates discussed here do not establish a definitive current consensus age.
For observers, NASA’s Libra location and coordinates can help identify the star’s field. A star chart can aid in finding that patch of sky, but locating HD 140283 is separate from measuring its age: the age comes from distance observations, composition measurements and stellar-evolution models.
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