Hi Greg & All,
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley
Can I ask a question?
How could a galaxy near to us possibly be dated not long after the "Big Bang".
That would mean that our galaxy would have to be near the centre of the physical universe and I doubt that is the case given the 300 billion or so galaxies estimated to exist.
Also it would assume scientists have identified the centre of the physical universe and I do not know that anybody has.
Greg.
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Sorry I posted a reply to Trevor and appeared to ignore you for a while, but I'm had to go to work and I'm back home now and ...
Without writing a whole essay (as I usually do)(I know, I know) as I understand it, there is no real 'centre' to the physical universe as such.
Virtually the
big galaxies that are reasonably nearby (say within 100 million ly) to the Milky Way are approximately the same age which is not a lot younger than the age of the Universe at about 14Gyr. The dwarfs have varying ages, some
very old, some old and a few young ones. They are dated from their spectra which reveal the age of their oldest stars. They can't be younger that the oldest stars in them!
The Globular Clusters are some of the oldest, if not the oldest stellar associations in the Universe. They may have been
one placewhere the fabled (theorised but not yet found) Population III stars (that no longer exist) once lived. The GC's are (by definition) all 10Gyr old or older. Some are up to 13Gyr old.
Hope this is some help.
Best,
Les D