The measurement of radioactive decay within certain elements in the Earth is the means by which the age of the Earth and various parts of its surface are determined.

This method gives the Earth an overall age of 4,600 million years.

However, a simple observation which I made during the development of the more physical aspects of my expansion / contraction model in the Visible Earth section ( relating to geology and plate-tectonics ) is that this apparent age of the Earth is about 200/250 times older than the length of time that the seabeds of my model take to expand ( from continental shelf to mid-oceanic ridge ), which is about 20 to 25 million years ( based on present seafloor growth rate ). However, in this 20/25 million year period the overall Earth sphere has become about 20/25 times larger. The similarity of these ratios has led me to speculate that there is a distortion of the measurement of time involved that is relative to the increase in the size of the object.

It would appear that radioactive decay, in conjunction with other dating methods, is quite severely distorted. Yet, no experiments to date have succeeded in slowing radioactive decay as significantly as this. It is largely unaffected by increases in gravity, temperature, magnetic field, etc.

For the moment I will refer to this as a distortion of dating methods by an 'unknown factor'. I believe this distortion creates the impression of longer and longer periods of time and slower and slower development as we go further back in time.

This section will explore this concept in relation to my hypothesis, regarding the solar system as a timeline. This touches on many fields more abstract than those generally explored on this site. For the moment, while I read and develop it further, I will simply sketch in a few thoughts on the following pages.