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This clip claims scientists found a star 200M years older than the Universe. However, I took another assertion more seriously: scientists estimated a faster expansion rate of the Universe, driving age down to 11.4B years.

The clip cites no sources whatsoever, so I looked further; not much out there, and the most remotely credible was this phys.org article, attesting to a disagreement on rate of expansion. Found no actual scientific publications.

So what's the real state of affairs on the matter? Are we still highly uncertain on the 13.8B figure, or are the lesser figures based on a different definition of "age"? (Or maybe it's pop hype nonsense)

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    $\begingroup$ It's quite difficult to measure Hubble's constant accurately, as the whole universe is fluid. Despite that, we are pretty confident that the current values measured have errors significantly < 10%. The hardest part is, however, estimating past values of the Hubble constant. (Note that the Hubble time is ~ 14B years). While I think the Wikipedia articles is a bit overconfident, pretty much every relevant study yielded between 13 and 14.5 By. $\endgroup$
    – mostanes
    Dec 10, 2019 at 21:28
  • $\begingroup$ @mostanes that looks like an answer to me $\endgroup$
    – Kyle Kanos
    Dec 11, 2019 at 0:20
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    $\begingroup$ The commonly accepted estimation of the age of the universe might be wrong, see here: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/514882/… $\endgroup$
    – MadMax
    Dec 11, 2019 at 15:43

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