Eli5, if I left some valuable collectible, say, a car or a paining in am hermetically sealed room filled with pure argon and nothing else, and had it completely protected from UV radiation, would it ever decay or degrade?

Question

Eli5, if I left some valuable collectible, say, a car or a paining in am hermetically sealed room filled with pure argon and nothing else, and had it completely protected from UV radiation, would it ever decay or degrade?

In: 121

Answer 1

You’ll slow it down incredibly but entropy says everything is always moving towards a state of disorganization. You can’t stop the atoms from actually moving or the effects of even gravity. You may slow it down so it lasts thousands of years, but you can’t stop it