Methuselah (thing)

As well as being the longest-lived man in Biblical history, (or not), Methuselah is now the name of a Planet. Aptly named, Methuselah the planet is now recognized as the oldest known planet, having formed some 12.7 billion years ago, astronomers report. This is all based on measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope, which indicate Methuselah is an extremely large gaseous object, twice as massive as Jupiter and apparently almost as old as the universe itself.

Seen as a "stunning revelation", scientists are now re-evaluating previous theories of planetary formation, since earlier notions doubted the presence of certain heavy elements in the universe required for said creation. Elements heavier than helium and hydrogen, as well as ingredients of silicon and iron, are necessary in the "recipe" which is then "cooked in the nuclear furnaces of stars" and then "recycled" in new stars, which include the families of planets.

Methuselah, the planet, was discovered amidst a cluster of ancient stars known as M4, which is 7,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. Now orbiting a pair of burned-out stars, Methuselah itself cannot be seen, and has only been inferred by its effects on a previously discovered pulsar. Linked by gravity with a "white dwarf star", irregularities in the pulsar's signals revealed the presence of a third object orbiting the other two; voila, Methuselah.

Astronomers believe the life of this planet has been a "tempestuous" one, having to "live through" shock waves of closely dying and exploding stars. However, "living" in the outer region of cluster M4 seems to be an unlikely neighborhood for a planet, and according to most researchers is certainly an unlikely neighborhood for life itself, but, an expert from the Carnegie Institution asserts, "This means that 13 billion years ago, life could have arisen and then died out...this has immense implications," indeed. And lastly, there was a 1991 Star Trek episode entitled "Requiem for Methuselah" which dealt with the discovery of a planet, not deserted. May the force be...somewhere.