Test #6: The ages of globular clusters and of superclusters of galaxies

If the universe originated 10-15 billion years ago, then no objects within it can be older than that. Yet the deduced ages of globular clusters of stars in our own galaxy do appear somewhat older than that, perhaps 16-18 billion years old. It is usually assumed that either something is wrong with stellar evolution theory, making the calculations come out too large; or that the universe is actually more like 20 billion years old, as astronomer Sandage has argued. So the age of globular clusters is not presently a strong argument for any model of the universe.

The age problem is a bit more severe in the case of superclusters of galaxies. These huge structures would take perhaps 100 billion years to form, given the typical relative speed of galaxies¹⁰. The same problem applies to "great walls" of galaxies, which are even vaster structures. There is no clear way to form structures on such large scales in the time available unless relative velocities were much higher in the past. But higher past velocities would require a dissipation mechanism which would have released tremendous energy. There is no credible evidence at present for the operation of such an enormous energy sink as would be required to resolve this dilemma. Therefore, this test presently favors static universe models, which have essentially unlimited time to form the observed structures through normal processes.