what star is used to mark time that is relative to the formation of the universe?

Answer 1

they base the age of the universe on the movement of the stars/glaxies, and not on any one particular star. scientiest can tell by viewing the light spectrum of any particular object in space, which direction its moving and often how fast and how far away they are from each other. id assume that most objects in space appear to be moving from a central point which suggests massive centric explosion forcing all matter in the universe outwards (aka the big bang / aka the formation of the universe). when an object is moving away from earth, there is a "shift" to the red portion of the spectrum, thus the term to indicate this movement is "redshift". on the contrary, objects moving toward each other shift to the "blue" portion of the spectrum and this is called a blueshift. using this information plus lots of math, scientists are able to calculate the distances between the stars and make approximations as to the age of the universe, etc.

here is a link i found (first one from google doing a search for "big bang theory"):

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/b_bang.html

Answer 2

You're probably thinking of a cepheid variable. These are stars with a very predictable energy flux - because of that, observed luminosity (from Earth) is only dependent on distance. Since light is a fixed speed, it can be used to determine the time it took to travel to Earth.

These, however, are only really good indicators up to about 100 million light years. To go into the billions of lights years distance (billions of years in time) there are other standards, like a Type 1 Supernova.

Answer 3

Cephied variable stars are used as "standard candles" for brightness, which (along with distance and mass) can determine age.
Another thing used to determine the age of the galaxy is the Hubble constant, the speed at which the galaxies are receeding away from each other. The Hubble constant is about 70 mpc/sec. Both of these standards but the age of the universe at 14 billion years.

Answer 4

There is no known point of reference that we could assign as a relative marker to the formation of the universe.

Answer 5

There is no star associated with the beginning of the universe

Answer 6

I believe you're talking about white dwarf stars. They burn very long, and very low - and are amongst the oldest stars known. They're also very uniform in brightness, and a good signpost for measure the red-shift of galaxies.

Answer 7

Sol. We measure our time by our revolution around this star. Our perception of time in relation to this cycle is how we relate the passage of time to the rest of the universe.

Answer 8

There is none,

However, astronomers with super powerful telescopes can see light from object billions of light years away. It is by these, that we can estimate the age of the universe.

Answer 9

No such object exists.

Instead, you should learn about Hubble Flow, cosmological time, and closest to your point, comoving coordinates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comoving_distance