What particularly surprises me about this is that the star is in our own galaxy. I'm used to the idea of seeing remnants from the early universe from observations of very distant galaxies, but of course then we're seeing them as they were long ago. This is a second generation star that's almost as old as the universe, but in our neighbourhood and we're seeing it as it is "now" (or close enough).<p>I wonder where in the galaxy it's located? Intuitively I'd expect such an object to survive longer if it were out in the rim or halo of the galaxy, in a more rarified region, but of course intuition on these things can be very misleading.