Stone steps erode with every footstep, leading to indents over time, right? But other things seem to erode on their own through time alone, so what causes that? Wind and rain? Would it therefore be correct to say that anything, if subjected to constantly running water, loses a few atoms every second and would eventually erode? Would this mean nothing is technically 100% waterproof? Or can things erode on their own without an external force? Thanks!
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Almost. Fundamental particles like electrons don’t have smaller components to decay into, but their wave functions would spread throughout the universe if not locally constrained by the forces in a proton.
Composite particles made of quarks, like Neutrons, can decay into other particles (the half life of a neutron is something like 15 minutes), but protons themselves are thought to be perfectly stable and never decay. Under Roger Penrose’s idea of conformal cyclic cosmology, protons can actually decay after an obscenely long time, which kickstarts another Big Bang after the heat death of the universe, because nothing has rest mass anymore, making the separate concepts of space and time essentially meaningless.
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