One of the oldest known objects in the universe is wandering around the Milky Way.
Star cluster M92, a densely packed ball of stars roughly 27,000 light-years from Earth, is about 13.8 billion years old, researchers report in a paper submitted June 3 to arXiv.org. The newly refined age estimate makes this clump of stars nearly the same age as the universe.
Refining the ages of clusters like M92 can help put limits on the age of the universe itself. It can also help solve cosmic conundrums about how the universe evolved.
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