Does the universe really need to be at lea as old as the old

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Does the universe really need to be at least as old as the oldest thing in it?

I have heard that it the case. But is it possible that something from another universe could get sucked into a wormhole and wind up in our universe, but actually be older than the universe?

I would start from the assumption that yes the universe is at least as old as the oldest thing in it, and that if one wishes to argue an object is older than the universe that they would need to prove that point.

That said, if this turns to a physics discussion it will be above my head so I can only provide an argument rooted in logic.

I agree with Funeralxampire in that the universe has to be as old as the oldest physical thing in it.

I do think that mankinds tools to measure the age of the universe or anything physical in it have flaws.

Over the years astronomers do find clusters of stars, or some like object, that appears to be "older than the entire Universe", until they work out another explanation for the anomaly.

Trouble with this question is that it relies on the logical fallacy of "explaining one unknown with another unknown".

We dont know if other "Universes" exist or not, and if they do exist we dont know if objects can travel between them and this "universe". Indeed the very phrase "other universes" is kind of a contradiction in terms since the word "universe" means "all that exists". What you mean by the word "Universe" is sometimes now called "a Hubble volume" (the part of intergalactic space that can either observe, or can extrapolate that exists from what we observe).

I suppose that you could also call it a "Hubble bubble", but that would make it sound like a brand of chewing gum.

Isn't there some theoretical idea out there that says something about universes perhaps being created by black holes? The idea being a black hole 'eats' everything and then 'spits' all that back out in a Big Bang type of event? If that's the case, and I recall correctly, then in that thought, the universe is created by things older than it, so it would absolutely contain things in it older than it is.

Then there's always the possibility that I am not remembering that correctly at all and am only talking nonsense.

As far as i'm concerned(not an astrophysicist or anything...) the universe is everything there is, so how can it (a collection of particles) have existed longer than any of its parts? The unvierse is nothing in itself, its only the grouping of all instances particles that exists.

On the other hand perhaps there was only "the world" until we discovered more (exo-)planets etc, and now the world often just means earth, so perhaps in the future we will change the meaning of the universe to not mean everything. On the other hand unless we invent/discover FTL tavel (and i mean a lot faster) then we will never even be able to interact with other universes, not to mention the fact we may have only discovered a fragment of it, due to the speed of light (the observable universe).