A minimum age of the universe can be estimated directly by determining the age of the oldest objects in the our Galaxy .
These objects are the metal-poor stars in the halo of the Milky Way .
Recent work on nucleochronology finds that the oldest stars are 15.2 \pm 3.7 Gyr old .
White dwarf cooling curves have found a minimum age for the oldest stars of 8 Gyr .
Currently , the best estimate for the age of the oldest stars is based upon the absolute magnitude of the main sequence turn-off in globular clusters .
The oldest globular clusters are 11.5 \pm 1.3 Gyr , implying a minimum age of the universe of t _ { universe } \geq 9.5 Gyr ( 95 % confidence level ) .