N. Reid, GLOBULAR-CLUSTERS, HIPPARCOS, AND THE AGE OF THE GALAXY, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United Statesof America, 95(1), 1998, pp. 8-12
We discuss the impact of the results from the recent Hipparcos astrome
tric satellite on distance estimates of galactic globular clusters. Re
calibrating the clusters not only implies a relatively small change in
the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud, and hence a rescaling of
several estimates of the Hubble constant, but also leads to significan
tly younger cluster ages. Although the data are not yet conclusive, th
e results so far point to a likely resolution of the apparent paradox
of a universe younger than its constituents, without requiring signifi
cant modifications to simple cosmological models.