Just 190 light-years away in the constellation Libra lies a stellar relic from the dawn of our Galaxy: HD 140283, better known as the “Methuselah Star”. With a shockingly low abundance of heavy elements and a blistering speed through space, this unassuming star has earned a reputation for being ancient.
In 2013, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope measured its distance accurately and, based on its brightness, temperature and composition, estimated its age at around 14.46 billion years — give or take about 800 million years. That estimate caused eyebrows to raise: after all, the Universe is estimated to be only about 13.8 billion years old. Did we just find a star that predates the Big Bang?
The short answer is no — but the twist lies in the margins of error. Because the age estimate carried a significant uncertainty, it could in fact be as “young” as about 13.7 billion years — still extraordinarily old, but safely younger than our Universe. The tension came down to how precisely we can model the star’s internal processes, measure its chemical composition and estimate its true luminosity.
Since then, improvements in both measurement and modelling have helped refine the star’s age. A 2021 study that used newer interferometric data and updated stellar-evolution codes placed its age closer to 12.0 ± 0.5 billion years — comfortably within the Universe’s timeline. A 2024 analysis showed that when you take into account the star’s detailed element abundances, you get age estimates between 12.3 and 14 billion years depending on modelling assumptions. And in 2025, asteroseismic work yielded about 14.2 ± 0.4 billion years, again within 1-sigma of the Universe’s age.
So why has this star stirred such interest? Because it’s a direct link to the early Universe: a metal-poor, ancient star likely formed when the Milky Way was assembling and heavy elements were still scarce. It offers an invaluable test for our understanding of stellar physics and cosmic history. It also demonstrates how astronomy often operates on the razor-edge of precision: a few % uncertainty in age or distance can mean the difference between “older than the Universe” and “just younger than the Universe”.
In the end, the Methuselah Star doesn’t overturn cosmology — rather, it confirms it in a dramatic way. It shows that stars formed very early, shortly after the Big Bang, and that some still survive on the fringes of our Galaxy today. It stands as a humbling reminder: even with our best telescopes and techniques, nature holds on to some of its oldest secrets.
Sources:
• Bond H.E. et al., “HD 140283: A Star in the Solar Neighborhood that Formed Shortly After the Big Bang”, 2013.
• “How Can a Star Be Older Than the Universe?” – Live Science.
• “Methuselah’s Star is not older than the Universe after all” – SYFY Wire.
• Guillaume C. et al., “The age of the Methuselah star in light of stellar evolution models with tailored abundances”, 2024.