We've all heard the phrase "billions and billions of years." Usually the phrase is accompanied by the speaker rolling his hands outwardly and repeatedly as if to demonstrate a continual unfolding of time. But what does this really mean? Can the human mind really comprehend a billion years?

It has now been almost 50 years since a committee of evangelical geologists rebuked me about a paper I had just presented at the 1953 convention of the American Scientific Affiliation.

Recent experiments commissioned by the RATE project¹ indicate that "1.5 billion years" worth of nuclear decay took place in one or more short episodes between 4,000 and 14,000 years ago.