Astronomers have discovered the oldest living star in the universe -- and, remarkably, it's situated right on our galactic doorstep, just 6,000 light years away, well within the Milky Way. The star, which has the abbreviated name of SM0313, was born 13.6 billion years ago -- just 100 or 200 million years after the Big Bang. It is believed that SM0313 is an elusive Population II star -- a star that was formed from the remnants of one of the universe's very first supernovae. By using SM0313's spectrographic fingerprint as a baseline, we will hopefully be able to find more ancient stars, eventually allowing us to build up a better picture of what actually happened during (and before?) the Big Bang.