Are Sharks Really Older Than the North Star?

If you've spent enough time on the internet, you may have stumbled upon the fact that sharks are older than Polaris, aka the North Star. But are they really? It turns out the truth is a little more complicated.
Hosted by: Reid Reimer (he/him)
Credit correction:
Writer: James M. Gaines
Editor: JD Voyek
Fact Check: Heather Hess
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Sources:
www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/shark-...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
agro.icm.edu.pl/agro/element/...
iopscience.iop.org/article/10...
iopscience.iop.org/article/10...
iopscience.iop.org/article/10...
www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf...
www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/shark-...
www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf...
www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/...
Image Sources:
www.gettyimages.com/detail/vi...
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:...
rs.figshare.com/articles/jour...
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
www.gettyimages.com/detail/vi...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris...\
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
www.gettyimages.com/detail/vi...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(s...
www.gettyimages.com/detail/ph...
www.gettyimages.com/detail/ph...
www.gettyimages.com/detail/ph...
www.gettyimages.com/detail/vi...
www.gettyimages.com/detail/vi...

[@AnkaaAvarshina]

I always thought that whole "sharks are older than the North Star" was simply in the sense of sharks are so old that Polaris wasn't the North Star back then, it was another star.

[@Appletank8]

The "most north star" changes every few hundred years, so it wouldn't mean much then.

[@solsystem1342]

I mean, so are humans, and like almost every other species on the planet (older than the last change of north stars

[@DJFracus]

Polaris has been the North Star for less than 2 thousand years. That's not very impressive. There's manmade objects older than that.

[@PaintSkate8]

No it was specifically mentioned in viral posts that it wasn't the idea of the North Star they were older than, but the star itself.

[@tildessmoo]

I seem to recall that α draconis was the North Star around about 5000 years ago, so in that sense not just humans but civilization is older.

[@aamirrazak3467]

The fact that sharks are older than trees and mountain ranges is just amazing imo. Such ancient, yet fascinating creature

[@DudeWhoSaysDeez]

it means that an ancient shark could have potentially surfaced in the water, looked up, and a photon from a star that was born could have touched its retina

[@aamirrazak3467]

@@DudeWhoSaysDeez a pretty cool thought

[@lauroralei]

​@@DudeWhoSaysDeez well stars are still being born. Odds are if you go out on a clear night and look up, photons from new born stars will hit your retinas, too

[@damiencouturee6240]

Its like alligators/crocodiles lol. No need to change when you already win the evolutionary lottery. Turns out being a tree trunk with giant teeth and the bite force of a meteor impact is a pretty solid design for getting food wiile not becoming food lmao.

[@nickkorkodylas5005]

They are not unless you include rays and skates in the definition and then some more until you reach chimaeras.

[@e.matthews]

Don't forget there are Greenland sharks swimming around that are 300+ years old!! So some living sharks were born before humanity entered the industrial age 🤯

[@whatsanenigma]

Trees are even more mind blowing when you think about life span. All of that just really puts things in perspective.

[@aamirrazak3467]

Greenland sharks are truly amazing, some are likely alive from before the time America was visited by columbus!

[@Booksds]

So there may be photons whose journey from the North Star to Earth occurred within a single shark’s lifespan! (Assuming the lower bound of 320 light years is correct)

[@DrakonBlake]

⁠@@BooksdsThis made me imagine some civilization around 300 light years away still watching their favorite shark show after 300 years

[@skippi99r32]

"and then theres that infamous 'when are you going to explode already' betelgeuse" 😂

[@rob1788]

I know. I keep watching

[@jeaniebird999]

And Betelgeuse is like, "I totally _did_ already!" (About 680 million years ago, it just hasn't arrived, yet.) Edit: Sorry, I couldn't remember the _exact_ distance and didn't feel like looking it up. It is 650 light years away; I was only slightly off.)

[@thrillerbmt]

Hahahaha

[@beatricetreadwell5785]

HAHAHA!! 😂👍

[@christophergraffam3552]

⁠​⁠​⁠@@jeaniebird999Given that Betelgeuse is just several hundred light years away not hundreds of millions, and is also under ten million years old, Betelgeuse going supernova hundreds of millions of years ago is not possible.

[@bcdm999]

Once you said, "we have to pivot from biology to astronomy," I was fully expecting the intro music to replay and the SciShow Space animation 😂

[@nathanielausten1577]

not to be that guy that corrects spelling errors but astronomy* not astrology. Just wanted to be clear cause one is total quackery and the other is very cool :) also having the sci show space animation would've been super cool

[@catbeara]

This is legitimately one of my favourite SciShow videos I've ever watched. I love when different areas of study intersect or are compared on a timescale or in a geographical way that is surprising.

[@peterrollinson-lorimer]

All of the folks at SciShow are stars, and they are definitely younger than me.

[@storyspren]

This whole video might be the best fun fact I've heard about Polaris: that it's not just in a cool spot in the night sky, but it's also very weird and could be weirder than we know

[@ashleyh7755]

I love the whole idea that things are weirder than we know. It's something that's filled me with wonder as far back as I can remember. I believed in basically *everything* when I was a kid, because how could you be absolutely certain of anything when there's so much we don't know, and so much more we don't know that we don't know.

[@ashleyh7755]

Just endless cosmic awe

[@Arkie80]

Shark: 'Y'all dinosaurs settle down. Lord, young'uns these days.'

[@nickporter4279]

The last common ancestor of all living sharks was in the Jurassic period, 160-200 million years ago. The Devonian "sharks" pre-dated the split between rays and modern sharks. This means that they aren't phylogenetically sharks: they're outside the crown group, Selachimorpha. They're informally referred to as "sharks" partly because it's a tradition that pre-dates the discovery that all living sharks are more closely related to each other than to rays, and partly because these fossils were cartilaginous predatory fish (and on the ancestral line to true sharks). So, "sharks are older than trees/polaris/dinosaurs" is one of the most widely-spread scientific inaccuracies. The crown group of sharks is younger than dinosaurs, and possibly younger than mammals (certainly younger than mammaliaforms).

[@nickporter4279]

Just to add: this isn't just taxonomic nitpicking, it's important for conservation education. The notion that sharks have survived most of the mass extinction events makes them seem immensely resilient as a group, and consequently able to survive what we're doing in the oceans. When in reality, they've only survived the Cretaceous mass extinction, and were almost wiped out midway through the Cenozoic for reasons we still don't understand. They're a highly vulnerable group, with slow reproduction, lengthy maturation periods, and despite their reputation no species is at the top of the food chain. Yet they serve a vital role in regulating ecosystems, clearing detritus, and providing nutrients for plankton via excretia. If they go, which is looking increasingly likely, we're all in big trouble.

[@Mrityormokshiya]

@@nickporter4279 I was about to say that you're s pedant but your second comment gave so much important context. Thank you, I had no idea and I learned something from you. Yes, we need to protect sharks 🙏🏼

[@sudazima]

this is actually mostly inaccurate yourself. the reason we call 'sharks' as a group 400 ish million years old as a group is because the predecessor of rays and sharks is very shark like in appearance. basically chondrichthias look very shark like so we call them sharks. really you could say the taxonomists messed up the term shark since some very shark like extinct creatures do not fall in that term formally.

[@sudazima]

@@nickporter4279 plus modern sharks _as a group_ are not highly vulnerable at all. only some that we really like are

[@nickkorkodylas5005]

Though I want to shout "Amen!" at your post I think that crown groups sharks are a bit older than that and the shark/skate split was around the same time mammaliaforms and dinosaurs appeared, in late middle Triassic.

[@openperspective]

Seems most likely that Polaris B got gravity captured by the Original Binary of Polaris A and Ab, leeching energy from the system and degrading their respective orbits. That would help explain the proximity of the two stars , while also explaining the distance of a much older star. The gravitational inspiral and eventual merger of another star by Polaris A seems likely to tear another body apart at that relative distance

[@misfits9294]

Yeah I was surprised no one brought that up yet in the video.

[@widodoakrom3938]

1:13 shark survived 4 out of 5 mass extinctions before shark didn't existed yet during Ordovician-silurian mass extinctions probably will survived 5 out of 6 mass extinctions that caused by humans

[@ltleflrt]

Whew, being reminded that there's at least one star out there younger than me made me feel very connected to the cosmos for a minute there :D

[@TomAmit42]

07:49 It's like one of my favorite jokes from "Rick & Morty", in the "Snake Jazz" episode: Morty: "There are snakes in Space?!" Rick: "There's literally everything is in Space!"

[@ahha6304]

When Polaris punched you "Omae wa mō shindeiru"

[@catpoke9557]

I think "It came from another system and is now in orbit" is the most likely, as a layman. Stars are traveling all over the place all the time. It's not that crazy of a thought that one would just... wind up in orbit with a much larger star.

[@patrickmccurry1563]

They would have to come at each other very slowly to become gravitationally bound. It's a very unlikely scenario, but still possible of course.

[@user-do5zk6jh1k]

​@@patrickmccurry1563 Not that unlikely. Even at high velocities, rate of closure will be low if directions of travel are closer to parallel.

[@user-xj8wy4uu1q]

You’d need another star to help

[@pepega3344]

Why do you think stars are travelling all over the place all the time?

[@radtech21]

My exact thoughts as well. Polaris B was captured. We’ll see what future research says about this.

[@Alice_Walker]

This is such a great episode! 💜

[@philcollinson328]

A timeline that amazes me is T Rex lived far closer to our time than it did to Stegosaurus' time.

[@justayoutuber1906]

Or that Cleopatra lived closer in time to us than to the building of the Great Pyramid in Giza.

[@thecarpking9773]

@@justayoutuber1906speaking of the pyramids, mammoths were still around at the time they were built on an island called Wrangel Island, which I find pretty fun to think about

[@timsullivan4566]

Well, the Minnesota North Stars didn't even exist until 1967 and then that NHL franchise folded in 1993, 🤔... ...so yeah, not exactly hard to believe sharks are more than 26 years old! 😏

[@SlavaPunta]

NORM GREEN SUCKS!!!!

[@Adam-zt4cn]

Every human was once the youngest object in the universe.

[@justayoutuber1906]

Every moment you are the oldest version of yourself

[@nathalie_desrosiers]

Reid, I love your speech pace. Just perfect to understand everything. Thank you.

[@shawncote1895]

As a hockey fan this title confused me at first

[@Nettiepie]

😂

[@petemartin6270]

excellent

[@shawncote1895]

@rememberingminnesota i will take your unbiased vote from Minnesota. thank you sir.

[@DoctorX17]

I remember when they added stars, that was a cool update

[@DudeWhoSaysDeez]

I personally like option 4 the most. I bet there is something else going on in this unique star system.

[@amberwalsh5767]

I had the same thought

[@andrebartels1690]

It's a haunting thought that there is very much nothing in between outer space and me, except a layer of air. It's especially haunting when I'm lying on my lawn at night, watching the stars. Freaks me out every time.

[@EmilyTienne]

Same! And yet no one in my sphere of family or friends gets this sense. 😥

[@cyberherbalist]

I had to laugh about the bit about keeping a "fine Sharpie" around in order to rewrite the astrophysics textbook!

[@Johnnyde94v2]

Thanks!

[@seonaelizabethcoster8465]

"When are you going to explode already, Betelgeuse?" Oh, burn! But, seriously, - Siriusly? - just go boom, already.

[@h7opolo]

splendiferous episode. i dunno how you dun it, but keep it up

[@LeoAngora]

Astro-shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo... 🎵

[@SpottedHares]

It like saying Birds and Mammals are older then flowers. It depends more on how far down the tree of life you go and still call something by its name. Birds are Dinosaurs and they are older then flowers but most people wouldn’t look at the early dinosaurs and think that they fit with birds just as we don’t really seam to fit with early mammals even if we both are.

[@paulcooper8818]

Good episode

[@willowmoon7]

These feels like the kind of dubious factoid you'd find on the bottom of a Snapple cap, chuckle at for a second, then throw into the trash.

[@rj795w6]

SPACE SHARKS!! YEA

[@samhianblackmoon]

Finning into a realm where I have scarcely ventured 🔥👍🏽

[@elainebelzDetroit]

I know this is not really related to the topic, but that is a beautiful shirt, sir.

[@wilsonli5642]

I didn't realize that the distance to Cepheid variable stars would be difficult to determine. Aren't they supposed to be standards by which astronomers measure the distances to other stars?

[@jamesforgington3315]

Polaris B is the most relatable star I’ve ever seen in our night sky

[@QuintenWhyte]

this looks like a job for... Michio Kaku

[@bensoncheung2801]

How eye-opening.

[@bmcquillan]

I would have said that the Earth is in "Space", but not "OUTER Space" since the "outer" is from the Earth's point of view.

[@affanshaikh8492]

Asking the real questions

[@lavilish]

That pin is beautiful

[@KenniBrisco]

Fr

[@maxM38383]

I just went shark cage diving and just went I thought sharks couldn't get any cooler you guys hit me with this.

[@Takatakyong]

Could it be that there was one a massive gas giant orbiting the older star, that somehow gobbled up the rest of the solar system and gained enough mass to start a fusion reaction?

[@chistinelane]

It wouldn't be enough unless it was solar system with like, 60-80 Jupiters. Even a brown dwarf merger would only create a red dwarf. Stars are just so massive!

[@Rosiechap1]

Is that an ammonite shirt? Where did you get it?

[@nuklearboysymbiote]

None of us will live to see the stars younger than us, but they're out there and will shine on our future generations… if we manage to continue on😳

[@titaniumvulpes]

My friends and I were literally just talking about this when this showed up in my feed and now we're all kind of freaked out lmao.

[@dafttool]

Lol This guy sounds like Penn Teller. I had to look at the screen to make sure.

[@bird8585]

This was interesting

[@rickseiden1]

"Who doesn't want to rewrite the physics text books?" All the physics majors who have to buy new copies every time that happens! 🤣

[@justayoutuber1906]

Yet the Bible never seems to change and its still the top seller. What is going on with all the Bibles?

[@Rubrickety]

…or maybe Polaris B is actually a GIANT SPHERICAL SHARK.

[@Techno_Idioto]

Star Sharks. Awesome.

[@horizon319]

If Polaris A is a variable that brightens and dims at regular intervals, and is too bright to study, why can’t we study it when it’s dimmer? Or is even the dimmer stage either too far away in time or still to bright? 🤔

[@feanor5037]

If Polaris A is that bright and that young, presumably it'll go nova relatively quickly? When do we expect that to be and how far would the radiation burst go? 500 or so light years is basically our galactic backyard!

[@patrickmccurry1563]

I just checked and estimates put it at under 6 solar masses. It would need to be 8 to go supernova.

[@lemagicbaguette1917]

50 light years is the typical killzone. We'll be fine.

[@sciencenerd7639]

I thought that they were going to mention that due to the earth's precession, Polaris hasn't always been the north star. Five thousand years ago the north star was Thuban. Sharks are therefore older than polaris being the north star. Not referring to the actual age of the star, it's just that it hasn't been the north star for long.

[@mojofier1909]

Damn, having an age crisis at 32 and to know a STAR is YOUNGER THAN ME... man I'm ancient. :\ lol

[@Dantalliumsolarium]

🥺🥺🥺 I’m the older brother of some stars??? They have my whole heart

[@ThePhoenixpaw]

So ... A partial Dyson Sphere/Swarm surround Polaris B have been conclusively ruled out? ;)

[@Syco108]

Now I can introduce myself as older than some of the stars in the sky

[@Dantalliumsolarium]

So…. A star can be so bright you can’t map it??? Rip scifi maps

[@wolfpackflt670]

Shark: The dinosaurs got nothing on us.

[@DennisBlades]

There’s things out there we don’t know about, really!!

[@sergetheijspartner2005]

It's kind of weird to think that the star that was used to navigate our ancestors over sharkinfested waters may be younger than those sharks and still older than humanity. Like if that star didn't exist what would we have used to navigate? (maybe an idea for another video), So kind of mankind was born in an age where we could actually use that star, know that star, write songs and poems about it and make scishow videos about the age of sharks and stars

[@Wario-The-Legend]

Are sharks older than Grandma? Riddle me that, scientists.

[@Bildgesmythe]

My grandkids asked me if we had colors when I was a kid! All those black and white TV shows 😂

[@isaacalberda250]

can you do a video abt all the earthquakes that just happened

[@DavyFlannagain]

I never heard this

[@kenneybis1097]

So how did the sharks navigate without the northstar?.. 🤔

[@killianobrien2007]

Magnetism?

[@shurikenstormX]

Three star system? "Woo! Go Team Three Star!"

[@justayoutuber1906]

Samsung means 3 star

[@arikuusela6716]

5:31 😃👍

[@Astromath]

Shouldn't it be really easy to calculate the distance to Polaris A given its a Cepheid Variable? Afterall Cepheids are used as standard candles for distance measurements...

[@nier6472]

imagine a creature so perfect it didn't need to evolve

[@l.riggins1857]

Interesting video. In response to one of your last statements, I'm not sure that earth is in "outer space". Possibly just part of space. Outer space is the space beyond a planet and its atmosphere and is typically taken to be planet earth and its atmosphere unless another planet and its surface and surroundings are being discussed.

[@catpoke9557]

But Earth's atmosphere and Earth itself is IN outer space. Things on Earth aren't in outer space. EARTH is.

[@l.riggins1857]

@@catpoke9557 Yes. You're right. I knew this was coming. I should have kept quiet. Earth is in outer space as in being surrounded by it, but not as in being a part of it.

[@seabeepirate]

5:16 still a better love story than twilight.

[@SiqueScarface]

Modern sharks (Neoselachii) are not that old though. Those Devonian (Cladoselachii) or Permian (Holocephali) sharks are not directly related to modern sharks, but belong to sister groups which have long died out without recent relatives, except the chimaera, which are the only holocephali surviving the Permian mass extinction. Neoselachii appear in the fossil record in the early Jurassic, making them about as old as early mammals (e.g. Sinocodon).

[@ANunes06]

7:10 - Literally made of star-stuff. Literally older than some stars out there in the universe. Nice.

[@Bern_il_Cinq]

Wait so the 3 Magi didn’t follow the North Star on the first Christmas?

[@justayoutuber1906]

The wise guys

[@enricofermi3471]

Maybe we should ask Kenshiro about that?

[@memk]

Just imagine in the far future the sharks evolved to sentient, and says "Our kind existed longer than a star". Best knife ear speech.

[@JIBARO2000]

Nice Return of the Jedi reference.

[@gildedbear5355]

I would LOVE to be able to find a star that ignited on the day that I was born. Pretty sure that's beyond our current capabilities, unfortunately.

[@aaamint9981]

Stars dont form in a day, it takes years

[@gildedbear5355]

@@aaamint9981 that would be why I didn't say, "form".

[@justayoutuber1906]

For me, it was Richard Pryor

[@mythicsagefire]

Please leave the info graphic up a bit longer. It takes longer to process new unusual names.

[@fariesz6786]

Sharks in Outer Space ..ON A PLANE!

[@KuraiKaNinja]

i love sharks SO MUCH. ❤❤

[@iloveplasticbottles]

Sharks are like the cockroaches of the sea: they survive anything

[@Lamster66]

I liked option 1 as most of the other constellations are made up of stars that are nowhere near each other and only appear to be from our perspective. The simplest solution would be that we got it wrong and Polaris isn't a trinary system.

[@thejuice027]

Or option 6, ask Hank.

[@frankmenchaca9993]

I always thought sharks didn't have skeletons (bones) but had cartilage to do that function.

[@artor9175]

There's a strong chance that Polaris B isn't even part of the system. It might be an unrelated star that just happens to be passing nearby. And it's not even clear how near it is, either. There's hundreds of light years in the margin of error on Pol Aa.

[@narmowolf4201]

why does my brain hurt when imagining a star younger than myself? lol it just doesn't feel right 😅

[@ANunes06]

I had no idea that we didn't know what the most famous star in the hemisphere ... IS. Hell, I had no idea that the only thing we really DO know is that it's not one single star.

[@perryrhodan1364]

“So sharks are older but they are not aware of it.” 😂

[@Ken-rq9xr]

Option five the north star moves to, some day it won't be there. And it wasn't always there either.

[@jmr]

I'm not sure when a star becomes a star. At what point is it hot enough or bright enough to be classified as a star?

[@TheDanEdwards]

When it starts fusion.

[@jmr]

@@TheDanEdwards That sounds about right. Didn't really think about that.

[@justayoutuber1906]

upon ignition

[@czarcoma]

Betelgeuse already exploded. We just hadn't seen it yet.

[@ExcretumTaurum]

Option 5: we’ve found a bug in the matrix

[@thewolfleader500]

NORTH STAR MENTIONED 🗣️🗣️ CLOVER BLAST 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️

[@randomstranger3473]

How theee

[@GraniteGhost778]

Wait, Betelgeuse is supposed to explode soon?

[@aliceinwonderland8314]

Yeah it's pretty imminent, but in astronomical terms, so chances are not in our life time. If I remember correctly it's a very fast lived star that's in the end stages of its life and when it does go it'll be able to be seen by the naked eye.

[@ComaDave]

Polaris? Maybe. Saturn's rings? Certainly.

[@AsheeBree]

Feel like there's a joke in there somewhere with Polaris AA 😄