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?
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I mean, eventually the atoms making it up will break down and disintegrate… But we will all be very long gone before that happens. And by we, I mean all life on Earth… and the Earth itself…
But I don’t think that is what you are asking.
I mean, eventually the atoms making it up will break down and disintegrate… But we will all be very long gone before that happens. And by we, I mean all life on Earth… and the Earth itself…
But I don’t think that is what you are asking.
Everything degrades eventually, it’s just a matter of time.
Obviously this would really delay the degradation, but it will still happen.
If you wait long enough the end of the universe will end the painting forever. 🙂
Everything degrades eventually, it’s just a matter of time.
Obviously this would really delay the degradation, but it will still happen.
If you wait long enough the end of the universe will end the painting forever. 🙂
Yes it would, but most forms of degradation would take a lot longer. It wouldn’t be very good for some materials to have very low moisture environment, for example wood can easily dry too much, warp and crack. Some materials inherently are not stable and will degrade in time, many plastics in particular. Ultimately, just thermal randomness means that even a block of inert metal sitting on it’s own will lose an atom or few every now and then.
Yes it would, but most forms of degradation would take a lot longer. It wouldn’t be very good for some materials to have very low moisture environment, for example wood can easily dry too much, warp and crack. Some materials inherently are not stable and will degrade in time, many plastics in particular. Ultimately, just thermal randomness means that even a block of inert metal sitting on it’s own will lose an atom or few every now and then.
Not in a way that matters unless you want to use a scanning electron microscope analysis of the surface, but even metals can have atoms evaporate. It’s just very, very slow. That can then potentially find a hole it could escape though to the outside.
For a painting, the heat could damage the pigment depending on what it is, and that’d be a lot faster than a car but still probably not fast enough to matter within your lifespan.
Not in a way that matters unless you want to use a scanning electron microscope analysis of the surface, but even metals can have atoms evaporate. It’s just very, very slow. That can then potentially find a hole it could escape though to the outside.
For a painting, the heat could damage the pigment depending on what it is, and that’d be a lot faster than a car but still probably not fast enough to matter within your lifespan.
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