If you thought that stars had to be formed after the Big Bang, then you haven't been paying attention. The best measurements available indicated that the oldest observable stars were older than the upper estimates of the age of the universe. The new LMC distance throws these calculations off by about 10 percent and makes the universe not 12 but 13 billion years old. But by changing the cosmic yardstick, Hipparcos affects measurements of globular clusters too. If these are farther away, then they must be intrinsically brighter.
Astronomers know that younger stars are typically hotter and brighter than older stars.
So if the clusters are brighter, they are at most 11 billion years old and the cosmic conundrum vanishes. It was isolated from Euplotes which is a pond dwelling organism with relatively abundant telomerase. The ends of chromosomes which cannot be fully replicated by standard DNA replication. They require an enzyme called telomerase to remain intact. An enzyme that uses an RNA template to maintain the ends of linear chromosomes.