“The oldest stars in the Milky Way are 13.4 billion years, give or take 800 million years. This is somewhat close to what the age of the Universe is (which hovers around 13.7 billion years). By measuring the age of these stars, and then calculating the interval between their formation and the death of the previous generation of stars, we can come to an approximate age of the Milky Way as 13.6 billion years.[1]”
This and other factors, suggest that our moment in time and space bears the signature of God. Miracle after miracle happened, and life survived despite all odds. This Truth parallels the story of life on Earth, or should I say in the Milky Way? How since the beginning of time, 13.7 billion years ago, God created the Universe. God is NOT the Universe; we know only that God is Spirit.
John 4:24
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
We do not worship through science. Science is similar to mathematics. It is a tool, we developed through our understanding of the world and its laws, to understand our creation. NOT GOD! “God is Spirit!”
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
“Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes. The Milky Way, for example, is a spiral galaxy.
But spiral galaxies like ours are surprisingly rare in our galactic neighborhood, and for years, astronomers have wondered why.
Researchers turned back the clock to approximately 13.8 billion years ago when our galaxy and those around it were just starting to form.
The researchers simulated the evolution of our galactic neighborhood to see what may have happened over billions of years to make spiral galaxies so rare in our corner of the cosmos.
They found evidence of a turbulent past. The simulation showed that galaxies in dense clusters, like the one our Milky Way calls home, experienced frequent collisions and mergers.
When galaxies merge, they can form a whole new type of galaxy. For example, when two spiral galaxies collide, it’s thought to create what’s called an elliptical galaxy.
That’s what both observations of our nearby universe and the simulations showed: Our galactic neighborhood has plenty of elliptical galaxies but very few spiral galaxies, suggesting that our Milky Way somehow survived amidst a chaotic scenario of galactic bumper cars over the age of the universe. [2]”
“independently of the rest.
“For the first time, we have clearly established a ‘genetic difference’ between stars in the disc and the bulge of our Galaxy,” said Manuela Zoccali, lead author of the paper presenting the results in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. “We infer from this that the bulge must have formed more rapidly than the disc, probably in less than a billion years and when the Universe was still very young.”
“In other words, bulge stars did not originate in the disc and then migrate inward to build up the bulge but rather formed independently of the disc,” said Zoccali. “Moreover, the chemical enrichment of the bulge, and hence its formation timescale, has been faster than that of the disc. [3]”
References: 1. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/scientists-think-they-ve-finally-solved-the-decades-long-mystery-of-why-our-milky-way-galaxy-is-so-rare/
2. https://www.universetoday.com/21822/age-of-the-milky-way/
3. https://www.universetoday.com/617/the-milky-ways-bulge-formed-early/