May 16, 20196 min read

How old can things get?

Updated: Jan 24, 2020

Aspens in the forest/ Photo by Andrew Preble @ Unsplash. See link under sources.

The oldest person to have ever lived, of which we have records of was Jeanne Calment[1], who died at the age of 122 in 1997. But remarkably, further investigations claimed that her daughter assumed Jeanne’s identity to avoid inheritance taxes. The final verdict on this case of potential fraudulence is still up for debate, but the story still checks out. In 2013, NBC News reported that Carmelo Flores Laura[2], a Bolivian man at the age of 123, was the oldest person alive based on the Bolivian public records. An article on Mirror UK stated that Koku Istambulova[3], a Russian woman, implied her age to be 128, but the Russian government claims that her age hasn’t been officially verified.

Determining age, as easy as it may sound, can get tricky. But, what about lifespans in the animal kingdom? Several animal species outclasses us when it comes to age. For instance, the oldest known land-living animal confirmed by the Guinness world records is Jonathan[4], a 187 years old tortoise. But age can get vague and longer when we look to our oceans, especially to the ocean floor. This is because, in the depths of the ocean, the animals are protected from fluctuating environments that affect most of the other animals on the planet. The ocean-beds are relatively stable, and natural selection[5] favors long lifespans under such conditions. The Greenland sharks[6], which lives in the depths of the arctic ocean is thought to have a lifespan of up to 200 years. Other animals like mollusks, corals, and sponges have lifespans that are far longer than mammals or reptiles. The oldest marine species in that aspect was a sponge[7], which was estimated to be 11,000 years old!

White ruffle sponge(Ferrea sp.)/ NOAA/Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute — Example of a sponge/ White ruffle sponge(Ferrea sp.)/ credit: NOAA/Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Until now, we have only glimpsed and contemplated the awe of the animal kingdom. We haven’t walked amongst the trees yet. By comparison, the plant kingdom has longer-living species than what the animal kingdom holds. Giant sequoias, Alerce trees, and Bristlecone pines are three of the longest-living[8] tree species in the world, whose lifespans are easily over 1,000 years.

Let's talk trees

Methuselah, a bristlecone pine in the white mountains of California, USA, was 4,850 years old as of the late 2010s as per Oldlist[9], a database of trees. But the numbers get more intriguing when we look at clonal organisms. A clonal spruce tree in Sweden holds the record as the oldest recorded tree. As per an article[10] on science daily, the spruce was 9,550 years old in 2008. There are similar clonal trees that can sprout newer trees from its root system for thousands of years, forming a colony or even a forest. Pando[11], a quaking Aspen which extends over 100 acres from a single root is not only the largest organism[12] on the planet, but is also the heaviest, weighing at 6000 tonnes, and also the oldest, estimated to be around 80,000 years old! This means that the Pando would have been around when modern humans began spreading to Asia from Africa.

Then there are things which our eyes can’t spot unaidedly. Some bacteria react to harsh environments by producing spores around them, in which they can remain dormant for long periods. A strain of bacteria[13] known as Hermeniimonas glacei was found by scientists underneath a block of ice in Greenland, which was estimated to be 120,000 years old!

Older and older we go

Life originated on our planet around 4 to 3.5 billion years ago. But enough with the living. The title doesn’t necessarily say ‘living things’ but all possible things. However, trying to determine the age of all things is bizarre, simply because there are too many things that can be included in the set of all things in the universe. Even a subset of all things on earth sounds like a supertask. So, for the sake of this discussion, and plausible contemplation problems, let's assume things which still exist today on earth, which may have outlived life itself.

Mountains are definitely in contention for this honor since they are such vast structures that can persevere through almost anything that affects smaller things. According to many studies, the oldest mountain on the planet is situated near to the border of South Africa and Swaziland, called the Makhonjwa mountains or the Barberton Greenstone belt. Some of the rocks in the mountains were dated to be around 2.5 to 3.6 billion [14] years old, which could well have existed at the dawn of unicellular life.

Uluru, a giant sandstone rock formation in Central Australia is thought to be around 600 million years old/ Photo by Antoine Fabre @ Unsplash. See link under sources.

But we can go older. Rocks that we have found over the years have shown to be much much older. Acasta Gneiss[15] is a rock formation in the Northwestern Territories of Canada, which dates back to about 4.031 billion years! Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt[16], also an ancient rock formation in Quebec, Canada, is thought to be older.

But, none of these are as old as the oldest thing that we have ever found on our planet. That acknowledgment goes to tiny crystals found in rocks known as zircons. Zircon crystals[17] are indestructible and are resistant to almost anything! So much so that they migrate from rock to rock during the weathering process. Different aged zircon crystals have been found by scientists, but the oldest one amongst them was found in the Jack Hills, a region in the Australian outback, which dated back to about 4.4 billion years[18], only around 100 million years younger than the Earth.

Surely, we can’t go any older than that?

Our sun was formed from clouds of dust and gas pulled together by gravity. After the sun’s formation, the dust and gas formed rocky bodies, which continued to collide forming larger bodies, which pulled more mass together under gravity, forming the planets which we know and love, specifically the third one from the sun, which we live on. Within these dust clouds that form stars and planets, are remnants of massive stars that had gone supernovae, and contain numerous elements. Though there are theories regarding how elements could have hitchhiked to our planet on asteroids and comets, a large number of elements always existed here. The point is that these elements created everything on earth, like the famous words quoted by Carl Sagan,

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” — Carl Sagan

And in such a way of thinking, there could well be atoms on our planet that are as old as the universe itself, and they could well be inside your eyes that are reading this!

How old can things get?

Let's talk trees

Older and older we go

Surely, we can’t go any older than that?

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