3 ms·
A question - how common are such old stars? Because it is right in our backyard. 190 light years away are nothing. And if those stars are rare - that makes our
by ReptileMan 7y ago
A question - how common are such old stars? Because it is right in our backyard. 190 light years away are nothing. And if those stars are rare - that makes our neighborhood unusual - we have life and some of the oldest object in the universe in almost the same spot.
- acqq 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_population#Population_II_stars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_population#Population_... "Thus far, they have uncovered and studied in detail about ten ultra metal poor (UMP) stars" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_stars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_stars
- 4ad 7y ago190 light years is in our backyard compared to the size of the universe, but I was curious about how many stars are that close to us. It turns out that we have around 100k stars within 190 light years. 0.120 stars/parsec^3 * 4/3 * pi (190 ly * parsec/3.26ly)^3
- bArray 7y agoAlmost everything of interest essentially happens in our backyard because that's the place we can see with the most detail. It's a little like looking out at the Universe and coming to the conclusion that we're in the middle of it because the "edges" are all around us. Even if this was rare and there happened to be tonnes of very old stars only close to us, this could again be coincidental, especially if intelligent life is more common than we currently know.
- 4ad 7y agoThis is precisely true, only very small stars last very long, and small stars are very dim. All the old stars that we see must be very close. The bright stars that we see that are far away only live for a few million years.