The amount of 187Os in meteorites resulting from beta decay of the long-lived 187Re nuclide has been used as a measure of the time span of nucleosynthesis in our galaxy. During the galactic history, however, the rhenium atoms can be “astrated” several times into newly forming stars, where they are stripped of most or all of their electrons. An experiment conducted at the ion storage ring ESR at Darmstadt showed that for bare 187Re ions, the lifetime is shortened by more than nine orders of magnitude. This observation strongly suggests that the effective lifetime of 187Re during the galactic evolution might differ significantly from the lifetime of neutral 187Re. Furthermore, it enables a recalibration of the rhenium aeon clock in the framework of chemical-evolution models of our galaxy. Based on this new calibration, a preliminary lower limit of 12×109 yr for the age of our galaxy has been derived, which is, a fortiori, also a lower limit for the age of the universe. In combination with the Hubble constan...