The truth about the Methuselah star

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:02]In this video, we have a pretty far destination ahead of us, just a couple hundred lighty years away, and get to the HD 14283 star or its nickname Methusela.

[00:00:26]Play.

[00:00:43]Before we get into the video and the star, let's learn what Methuselah means.

[00:00:48]Methuselah is a legendary man that has been written about in the Bible and he's known as the oldest man in this book. It has been written that he aged 969 years and that's a little bit more than Noah. Noah has aged 950 years in the Bible. So we know that based on the Bible, Methuselah has aged the most and that's why his name is on this star. The reason for this name is that some scientists and astronomers believe that this star is the oldest star in the universe older than the universe itself.

[00:01:24]Astronomers and most scientists believe that the entire age of the universe is 13.7 billion years old. But they believe that Methusela is 14 12 billion years old.

[00:01:40]But most physicists and astronomers believe that this is all bull. The age of this star is not even the same as the Milky Way galaxy, let alone older than the universe itself. But anyways, how is the age of a star determined? How do they actually calculate it? When you want to get the age of a star, you have to take three things into consideration.

[00:02:02]The easiest step is its brightness. And with today's technology and the tools available to us, they can find the brightness very easily. The second thing we have to find out is its distance. But how do we get the distance? To get the distance of a certain star, we need at least 6 months time. Like for example, in the middle of the summer in June, you take a picture of the star and you wait six more months after basically in December and you take another picture.

[00:02:31]The difference between these two photos allows scientists and physicists to figure out how far this star is. You can even test this out with your finger.

[00:02:41]Just hold it in front of you and open your left eye and vice versa and see the difference. This is exactly what's happening with the telescopes on Earth.

[00:02:51]But it needs 6 months time. Of course, a lot of math goes into it to figure out the distance. It's not like just the basic formula. In these two seasons, if the star moves a lot, that means the star is very close to us. But if it barely moves and the less the movement get, the farther that star is. So the first step was brightness. The second step was the distance. And the third step, which is the weirdest and most difficult one is the metallicity or in simple term, how much metal is inside this star. But what does metal mean?

[00:03:24]Stars are made of metals. If you've seen our video about different elements like gold, iron, and carbon, you'll know that these elements were made under extreme heat, temperature, and pressures inside a dying star. In astronomy, anything that's heavier than hydrogen is considered a metal. Although that's not true because a carbon or helium is not metal, it just makes their wording much easier to call it a metal. They also call it heavy elements as well. Usually the younger or most ancient stars have the least amount of metals. And the more fuel they have, basically hydrogen. But the older the star gets, the more the fuel gets used up. And through fusion, heavier elements are created and that creates helium, carbon, and many many other elements. When you have more metals inside the star compared to hydrogen, the metallicity of that star is getting higher and higher. Or in other words, their star is getting older if it has a whole lot of metals in it.

[00:04:24]But by getting old, we're talking about billions of years because it's not like they live a few million years. But it's interesting to know that the oldest most ancient stars that have been discovered, they have a very low metallicity. And the reason for that is when the big bang happened and the universe was extremely young, hydrogen was the only element available in the universe. So these stars that were created had an extremely high amount of hydrogen. And also the data that the scientists receive is from more than 10 billion years ago. When the star gets to us, that's when the star was actually young. Of course, that star is most likely dead, but that's the data they have. At that time, the only elements available in the universe were hydrogen and helium because other elements had not been created yet. That was the job of a star. And eventually after billions of years when it dies it scatters all those elements through the universe. So in simple terms to figure out the age of a star you have to put these three main steps together to determine how old this star is. And of course this is a theory still. They can't truly say exactly how old this star is, but they can get pretty close.

[00:05:40]But let's get back to Methusale. Why is this star considered the oldest star in the universe? You have to note that this was a simple mistake that was done by the University of Pennsylvania in the year 2012. This university was using the Hubble's telescope to look at Methusala and the three basic step we explained to you guys. They were doing the same thing to figure out how old the star is. When they get all this data, they have to do a whole lot of formula and math to figure out and get an estimate on how old the star is. But it seems like in their calculation, they made simple mistakes here and there. And they got an absurd number, a number that's older than the universe itself. Their number was 14 1/2 billion years old. And when they announced this number to the scientific community, a lot of arguments started to take place here and there because from the get- go, nobody believed this number. It got even more crazy because regular people started talking about it in normal media channels because it was such a big deal on paper and it was kind of clickbaity and that's when they named this star Methusal, the oldest person in the Bible. Just like we said, most scientists were skeptical about this number. So they decided to do their own research to figure out why these guys got such a high number. They believe that if all this is wrong, then that means the big bang theory is completely wrong too because how could a star exist if the universe doesn't exist yet? The agency that actually took this serious and they started to do their own calculation was the European Space Agency. After 5 years of research, they estimate that the age of this star is about 12 billion years old. So that means it was born after the big bang since the big bang happened 13.7 billion years ago.

[00:07:34]But this still makes the Methusalees star the oldest studied star. There could be much older stars, but this is the only one we've discovered. The most interesting part about this star is that an average lifespan of a star in the universe is between 1 to 10 billion years. And right now, Metusala is the only star that has passed 10 billion years old. We've said this plenty of times in a lot of videos has been made, but usually when a star gets very old, they slowly turn into a red super giant when they start to run out of fuel. And eventually after billions of years, they explode in a supernova, scattering everything throughout the galaxy. But the awesome part is that Metal has not turned into a red super giant because it's still a normal star. Our own sun is only 5 billion years old. So it has about five more before we have to worry about it turning into a super giant.

[00:08:31]Basically destroying the entire solar system.

[00:08:37]There's a star close by us named Beetlejuice. And right now it's a red super giant. And some scientists believe that it's going to explode in a supernova or it already has and its light has not reached us yet. If you would like to know more about Beetlejuice, we have made its own video and it's very interesting because if it explodes in the night sky, it would be the second brightest thing in the night sky and that's for many years.

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