• Question: which planet is the oldest in the universe?

    Asked by to Ben, Emily, Hattie, Jemma on 26 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Emily Hayward

      Emily Hayward answered on 26 Jun 2014:

      Hi Cutewikib,

      You’ve got lots of great questions today 🙂 This is another pretty tough one to answer! According to NASA this is the oldest planet is pictured in the link below. They dont seem to have given it a name, but it looks quite cool.

      http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_76.html

      They think its 13 billion years old, however getting an exact date for things like this is pretty tough! Its very very old though.

    • Photo: Ben Butler

      Ben Butler answered on 26 Jun 2014:

      Hi @cutewikib,

      Another really interesting question! There are so many planets out there in the universe that’s it’s really difficult to tell which one is the oldest out of EVERYTHING. However the oldest planet that scientists currently know about is called PSR B1620-26 b (what a rubbish name eh!) which is 12.7 billion years old (our Earth is only 4.5 billion years old in comparison).

      If we wanted to travel to this planet, it would take 12,400 years travelling at the speed of light. So it’s unbelievably far away!

    • Photo: Jemma Rowlandson

      Jemma Rowlandson answered on 26 Jun 2014:

      Hi!

      No-one actually knows. The best theory for how the Universe created is the Big Bang Theory. From this massive explosion all matter, everything in the Universe today was created. From all the dust and gases after the explosion stars started to form. Once stars form they caused lumps of rock to come together and create planets.

      Since planets are created just after stars form, the oldest planets will be orbiting the oldest stars. The oldest star that has been found with planets is 12.8 billion years old! The star was created about 1 billion years after the big bang. Scientists cannot measure the age of the planet itself unless they actually get a satellite onto it and take samples (unfortunately it’s a very long way away, so this is impossible). Instead they assume that the planets are around the same age as the star, over 12 billion years.

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