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

That would certainly help a lot, but theoretically there could be some chemical inside the object that might degrade even outside the presence of oxygen or light.

Most paper, for instance, is naturally acidic and will degrade over time even in the environment you describe. Modern archivists have access to “acid-free paper” which lasts much longer, but obviously that would not have been available for much older books.