[7] How old are the stars and the universe? A Bible perspective

Can the age of the universe be reconciled with the Bible?

How old are the stars, how old is the universe?
Most scientists rely heavily on Hubble’s Law to determine how fast the universe is spreading outwards and therefore a start date can be calculated.
The age of stars is determined by observing their colour, known as their redshift.

But calculating the age of the universe using these methods is not without its criticisms, there are things that don’t fit with that theory.

The Bible states that God created the universe:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

Genesis 1:1-3 ESV

But interestingly, we are not told how much of a gap, if any, there is between “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” and “The earth was without form…”
It could be seconds or billions of years, we are not told.

1. Stars and galaxies are apparently billions of years old

There are distant galaxies in the universe that are millions or billions of light years away and yet we are just seeing the light from them now.
So many people with that knowledge would say that obviously, the universe is billions of years old.

How old are the stars? Well, by applying Hubble’s law, we can say that the universe is expanding, so logically we could roughly work out when they were all together in one place.

Further down this article, we look at a different way of viewing this, but firstly let’s look at Hubble’s Law:

2. How can Hubble’s Law help put an age on the universe?

Light from galaxies moving away from Earth is shifted to longer wavelengths which makes them redder in appearance and is known as being ‘red-shifted’.
From this, the velocity of the galaxies is calculated.

Hubble’s law, also known as the Hubble–Lemaître law, is the observation in physical cosmology that galaxies are moving away from the Earth at speeds proportional to their distance.
In other words, the farther they are the faster they are moving away from Earth.
The velocity of the galaxies has been determined by their redshift, a shift of the light they emit toward the red end of the spectrum.
Hubble’s law is considered the first observational basis for the expansion of the universe, and today it serves as one of the pieces of evidence most often cited in support of the Big Bang model.
The motion of astronomical objects due solely to this expansion is known as the Hubble flow.”

‘Hubble’s law’ Wikipedia²

Hubble’s law can be depicted in a “Hubble diagram” which can be seen below.
The velocity (assumed approximately proportional to the redshift) of a galaxy is plotted concerning its distance from the observer.
A straight line of positive slope on this diagram is the visual depiction of Hubble’s law:

The parameters that appear in Hubble’s law, velocities and distances, are not directly measured.
In reality we determine, say, a supernova brightness, which provides information about its distance, and the redshift z = ∆λ/λ of its spectrum of radiation.
Hubble correlated brightness and parameter z.
Combining his measurements of galaxy distances with Vesto Slipher and Milton Humason’s measurements of the redshifts associated with the galaxies, Hubble discovered a rough proportionality between redshift of an object and its distance. Though there was considerable scatter (now known to be caused by peculiar velocities—the ‘Hubble flow’ is used to refer to the region of space far enough out that the recession velocity is larger than local peculiar velocities), Hubble was able to plot a trend line from the 46 galaxies he studied and obtain a value for the Hubble constant of 500 km/s/Mpc (much higher than the currently accepted value due to errors in his distance calibrations).

‘Hubble’s law’ Wikipedia

Not all scientists agree with using Hubble’s Law, read more of his thoughts and also those who disagree with his theory.

3. Young stars disagree with the Big Bang’s age of the universe

There are a lot of young stars that don’t fit with the Big Bang theory:

Blue stars are the biggest and brightest of all ‘main sequence’ stars, but this means they burn up their nuclear fuel very fast.
Indeed, they burn so fast that the biggest ones could not last more than a million years, and the smallest around 10 million years.
Yet blue stars abound in spiral galaxies, including our Milky Way.
This suggests that these galaxies cannot be even one million years old.”

‘Star witnesses to a young creation’ by Don Batten⁴

It is easy to say; ‘Well they obviously were formed more recently than the rest of the galaxy.’
But no such star formation has been observed and there is no known mechanism for it to happen.⁵

To solve this problem, astronomers suggest that the first stars formed in a burst of activity in the early universe triggered by some unknown mechanism.
Do astronomers have any evidence for such a mechanism early in the universe? They claim that they do.
For example, since the collapse of gas clouds should produce stars of all masses, astronomers expect to detect light from the most massive, hot, bright stars—blue stars—wherever much star formation has occurred.
As predicted, very distant galaxies (and hence galaxies from the early universe) are systematically brighter than nearby galaxies.
Astronomers call these “starburst” galaxies and say the blue colour is evidence for explosive star formation early in the universe.
Furthermore, though astronomers have not observed the actual contraction of a gas cloud into a star, they have identified a number of different kinds of odd star-like entities that they view as snapshots of stars in various stages of formation.
Despite these claims, we should note that astronomers think that in the universe today, condensed clouds overwhelmingly produce low-mass red stars, but in the early universe they formed massive blue stars.
So evolutionary astronomers must ultimately rely upon some unknown mechanism to form the first stars in a manner that is very different from the inferred mechanism for present-day star formation.
But when did unknown mechanisms and unobserved processes become scientific concepts?”

‘Blue Stars – Unexpected Brilliance’ by Dr. Danny R. Faulkner⁶

Astronomers state that blue stars have a limited life of only several million years whereas the proposed age of the universe is nearly 14 billion years old, which is only solved by proposing an unknown mechanism while giving the impression that the Big Bang is fact and proven science.

4. Globular clusters disagree with the Big Bang’s age of the universe

Globular clusters are another problem for an old universe, so what are they?

Globular clusters are compact, ball-shaped groups of stars that orbit the centre of a galaxy.
They supposedly contain ‘very old’ stars.
The secular big bang story has great difficulty explaining them.⁷
Astronomers have seen many fast-moving neutron stars in globular clusters.
These are thought to arise from supernovas (exploding stars) within the cluster, where a neutron star is created that is ‘kicked’ out at very high speed.
With the compact sizes of globular clusters and the high speed of the neutron stars, all neutron stars should be ejected from such clusters in less than two million years.
Many globular clusters should have emptied in a few thousand years.”

‘Star witnesses to a young creation’ by Don Batten  ⁸

This unanswered non-retention of neutron stars is a problem in that it doesn’t confirm a ‘Big Bang’ hypothesis.
A major study has called it a “long-standing mystery”. ⁹
Here is the problem stated by scientists in their field of expertise:

Observations of very high speeds among pulsars in the Galactic disk present a puzzle regarding neutron stars in globular clusters.
The inferred characteristic speed of single pulsars in the Galaxy is ∼5−10 times as large as the central escape speed from the most massive globular clusters.
It is then reasonable to ask why any pulsars are seen in globular clusters, whereas, in fact, quite a large number have been detected and as many as ∼1000 are thought to be present in some of the richest clusters.
We use a Monte Carlo approach to generate a population of massive primordial binaries.
If we utilize the convention assumptions regarding mass transfer and neutron star kicks, we find that < 5% of the neutron stars initially formed in a massive cluster can be retained.
We suggest that this fraction is too low to account for what is observed, and we speculate on possible alternative solutions to the retention problem.”

‘A Comprehensive Study of Neutron Star Retention in Globular Clusters’ by Eric Pfahl, Saul Rappaport, Philipp Podsiadlowski ¹⁰

In the New Scientist magazine of 3rd August 2024, in the article ‘First Light’ which speculates about the three different star types based on their ages which are called Population I, II, and III stars, Stuart Clark does admit:

But there is a problem. The further back into cosmic history we have looked, the more astounded we have been to see nigh-on fully formed galaxies and supermassive black holes that shouldn’t exist because there hasn’t been enough time for them to form.
‘It is one of the big mysteries at the moment: how do you make very massive black holes very early in the universe?’ says Glover.” (Simon Glover, University of Heidelberg, Germany).

‘First Light’ New Scientist magazine. ¹¹

The article does discuss a possible avenue to explore this topic, but the beginning of the universe is incredibly difficult to work out and no scientist can give a definitive, 100% correct answer.

The words in Genesis 1:1 still stand true, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” because we do not know how much time passed from the initial creation to the formless Earth.
However, this is in conflict with the fourth day of Creation when God spoke the stars and other heavenly things into being.

5. How to reconcile a ‘billions of years old universe’ with the Bible

Could God have created everything instantaneously on each of the twenty-four-hour days?

Well, I will start by asking a question which probably seems trivial, but bear with me: How old was Adam?

The Bible tells us that God created Adam in this way:

the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

Genesis 2:7 NIV

Adam, all creatures and plants were made instantly according to their ‘kinds’ (NOT species) from which they spread out over the Earth.
Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden – which is not a parable.

Adam’s apparent age was (say) 20 years old only one second after he had been created if we take the Biblical account to be factually correct.

From just the dust of the ground, he suddenly became a living man comprised of bones, muscles, skin, etc.
His body, which should have taken 20 years to grow and mature, was immediately created.

a) How old were the plants and trees?

The Bible tells us that God created the vegetation in this way:

And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so.
The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.”

Genesis 1:11-13 ESV

The plants also were created instantly and therefore if a bough of a tree had been sawn in two, the rings of growth surely would have shown a history.
But the tree that looked (say) 15 years old would only have been just a few seconds old.

b) How old are the stars, galaxies and universe?

So an obvious question to ask is that if God created Adam, vegetation and other creatures instantly, then did God also create the stars and galaxies instantly?
If that is the case, have they got an apparent age built-in which is much greater than their actual age?

That could mean, that the universe when it was created had a history, a central point from which the stars and galaxies were flung and they are all now still moving outwards.

That makes it rather tricky to answer the question: ‘How old are the stars?’
In effect, we can’t then work out the age of the universe!
What if the stars and galaxies had been created with an apparent age of billions of years?

The Bible gives us these wise words:

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

Hebrews 11:3 NIV

Are Christians bonkers to believe in the Creation story? There is so much evidence for Evolution, or is there…?
Do all the different types and sizes of dog prove evolution?
The horse used to be a proof of evolution but it isn’t!
Quite a number of scientists believe in God and also some believe in the Creation account in Genesis.
Just because one scientific theory is the most popular, it doesn’t mean that it is correct, because this article shows how scientists over time kept changing their theories.
Modern genetics can trace the female line back to the first woman – the ancestor of all humanity, they have named her Mitochondrial Eve!

The Big Bang is proclaimed as fact by Popular Science on our TVs, magazines, etc. So what effect does that have upon the Christian faith?
Even though this is presented as fact, a number of the scientific community question the Big Bang’s validity.

6. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

References and credits – open in new tabs:

1. Dark blue nebula Free Stock photos by Vecteezy ↩

2. ‘Hubble’s law’ Wikipedia ↩

3. Brews ohare, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons ↩

4. ‘Star witnesses to a young creation’ by Don Batten ↩

5. Lisle, J., ‘Blue stars confirm recent creation’, Acts & Facts 41(9):16, 2012; icr.org ↩

6. ‘Blue Stars – Unexpected Brilliance’ by Dr. Danny R. Faulkner ↩

7. ‘Hubble observations cast further doubt on how globular clusters formed’ astronomy.com; 20 November 2014. ↩

8. ‘Star witnesses to a young creation’ by Don Batten ↩

9. ‘A Comprehensive Study of Neutron Star Retention in Globular Clusters’ by Eric Pfahl, Saul Rappaport, Philipp Podsiadlowski ↩

10. ‘A Comprehensive Study of Neutron Star Retention in Globular Clusters’ by Eric Pfahl, Saul Rappaport, Philipp Podsiadlowski ↩

11. ‘First Light’ New Scientist magazine 3rd August 2024. ↩