No one has the exact (and agreed upon) measurement of Polaris, the North Star. Different methods are used by different researchers, which yield conflicting results. Because of that, humanity’s navigational star still eludes scientific explanation, as Futurism detailed:
Part of the problem — and an equally baffling quirk — is that measurements suggest that one of the two binary stars is significantly older than the other, according to Live Science.
It’s possible, astronomers told Live Science, that the main star in the Polaris system used to be two smaller stars that merged — a process that makes stars appear younger than they are and also messes up some of the methods used to determine their mass.
image via wikimedia commons