“We are stardust.
We are golden.
We are billion-year-old carbon.”
– Joni Mitchell –
They say we are made of stardust. And that’s not just poetic fluff, it’s true. Every element in your body heavier than hydrogen and helium was born in the fiery death of ancient stars. When those stars exploded in supernovae, they scattered their ashes across the cosmos, carbon, oxygen, iron, and all the ingredients of life. Eventually, some of that stardust came together in a small solar system around a modest star. And here we are.
But if we are made from ancient stellar remains, how old are we, really?
According to the Big Bang theory, our universe began roughly 13.8 billion years ago, not with an explosion in space, but an expansion of space itself. In the beginning, everything, all matter, energy, time, and space, was compressed into a single, hot, dense point. Then, it expanded. And it’s still expanding today.
From that moment, particles formed, then atoms, then stars and galaxies. Our own Sun and solar system didn’t show up until about 4.6 billion years ago. So in one sense, you and I are about 4.6 billion years old. But the atoms we’re made from? They’re much older, formed in the hearts of stars that lived and died long before Earth existed.
For decades, astronomers using telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope could trace the universe’s history back to about 500 million years after the Big Bang, shedding light on those early cosmic days. But with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), our view has expanded even further.
Recent observations from JWST have revealed surprisingly massive galaxies existing just 300 to 400 million years after the Big Bang, much earlier and more mature than scientists expected. These “impossible early galaxies” challenge conventional models of how quickly galaxies could form and evolve.
Some researchers have even proposed that these findings could imply the universe is significantly older than the previously accepted 13.8 billion years, with estimates reaching up to 26.7 billion years in some new hybrid models that try to fit JWST data. However, other studies using additional JWST data reaffirm the universe’s age as still consistent with 13.8 billion years, suggesting that those early massive galaxies might be statistical rarities or require new physics to explain without revising the cosmic timeline.
Why does this matter? Because these revelations tie into one of the greatest current puzzles in cosmology: the Hubble Tension. This tension is a disagreement in measuring how fast the universe is expanding today.
Measurements based on the early universe, such as the cosmic microwave background from Planck, suggest a lower expansion rate.
Observations based on the local universe, including supernovae and cepheid stars, indicate a faster expansion rate.
If the universe is older or structured differently than we thought, it changes everything from our understanding of cosmic evolution to the very origins of the atoms in our bodies. The Hubble Tension and JWST’s discoveries remind us that the cosmos still holds many secrets, and we are only beginning to unravel them.
In a way, we are as old as the universe itself.
But perhaps what’s more important than knowing our exact age is realizing how ancient and connected we truly are.
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Written by : Aparna Nanayakkara