Stars older than universe?
This is an outdated problem, but it still occasionally appears in some creationist and anti-BBT tracts. We addressed part of this in the dark energy section, but we will reiterate for clarity. In the mid-1990s, the best estimates of the current Hubble parameter put the value around 80 km/s/Mpc — not very far off the current best value around 72 km/s/Mpc and well within the margin of error. At the time, the default theoretical model based on the predictions of inflation and the CMBR observations from COBE was a flat, matter-dominated universe. Under this model, the values for the Hubble parameter gave an estimated age of the universe around 10 billion years. At the same time, age estimates for the oldest stars in our galaxy were between 13 and 18 billion years. This conflict was called the “Age Crisis”. Shortly thereafter, two improvements in the data resolved this apparent conundrum. First, the Hipparchos satellite provided better estimates for the distances to the stars used in the a
