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

The decay would be -very- significantly slowed, but forever is a long time. Lots of stuff will still degrade slowly just because of temperature. Volatile components might off gas, various atoms and molecules will migrate around. Though you could also keep things cold as well to reduce that.

But even super cold, and well shielded over a very long time you still got cosmic rays that’ll degrade things. Bury it deep and you still get neutrinos to deal with. Though each additional layer of protection could potentially add orders of magnitude to how long the thing will last.

End result, yeah, everything degrades without upkeep. Maybe it will take millions of years if you specifically design something for extremely long life, but it will still happen.