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At 13.7 billion years old, the universe is inconceivably ancient. As new stars are born every day, its cosmic inhabitants are constantly changing, but scientists have now discovered the oldest star existing in space.

The old timer was identified by a team of astronomers from The Australian National University, who believe it formed shortly after the" Big Bang" that spawned the cosmos 13.7 billion years ago.

The newly-observed star, christened SMSS J031300.36-670839.3,has just topped the age of the current record holder, HD 140283 or "The Methuselah Star," which has been dated to be 13.2 billion years old.
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The speed of light may be the key to our getting off this planet. NASA physicist Harold G. White and his team are trying to determine whether faster-than-light travel–a "Star Trek"-type warp drive–might someday be possible (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show). In the July 23rd edition of the New York Times, Danny Hakim quotes White as saying, "Space has been expanding since the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, and we know that when you look at some of the cosmology models, there were early periods of the universe where there was explosive inflation, where two points would’ve gone receding away from each other at very rapid speeds.
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Astronomers have identified a star system just 22 light years from Earth with three planets that could potentially harbor life. The Gliese star system is easy to locate in the constellation Scorpius. The two main stars, Gliese 667A and B, are visible to the naked eye, but the one with the planets, Gliese 667C, requires a telescope to see. Gliese 667C has 7 planets, and 3 of them are in its habitable zone, which is the region around the star where temperatures would not be too high or too low for life to form, and where water would be a liquid. Earth is near the center of the sun’s habitable zone, and Venus and Mars are at its extremes. 
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Ever heard a star scream? Astrophysicists have detected the oscillating signal that heralds the last gasps of a star being sucked up by a previously dormant supermassive black hole.

The "screams," scientifically known as "quasiperiodic oscillations," occurred steadily every 200 seconds, but occasionally disappeared. Such signals have often been detected at smaller black holes and they’re believed to emanate from material about to be sucked in.
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