We present new age and distance determinations for the Galactic Globular Clusters M55 and M5 , using the luminosity function method ( Jimenez & Padoan 1996 , Padoan & Jimenez 1997 ) .

We find an age of 11.8 \pm 1.5 Gyr for M55 and 11.1 \pm 0.7 Gyr for M5 .
This confirms previous results ( Jimenez et al .
1996 , Sandquist et al .
1996 ) and allows to conclude that the oldest stars in the Universe are not older than 14 Gyr .

We also find m - M = 14.13 \pm 0.11 for M55 , and m - M = 14.49 \pm 0.06 for M5 .
These values agree with the ones obtained using the tip of the red giant branch ( Jimenez et al .
1996 ) and the sub-dwarf fitting method ( Sandquist et al .
1996 ) .