I often think of decay as a natural process. Today I wondered if the visual affects of aging have any effect on the actual dying process, like is someone that looks 80 more likely to die than someone that looks 60, although both candidates for death in this case are 70 years old, I wonder? Decay is understood as a scientific process within the world of uranium and half-lifes, but those ideas are abstract at best. Decay is also understood in an everyday way with things like meat and lettuce, but we don't think of it in terms of half-lives or lives, just simply decay. Zombies are the best example of a real-world half-life decay of a human body, Death accelerates decay, but I digress.
Half-life's are exponential in some sense and in that way I think of them as the same as the relativity of time; All of these explainations are rational explainations of mysteries based on some relevant truths. We can't fully understand these concepts by assuming that there is a relative scale of time that is somehow applicable to our sense of time. Example: If light is a constant and we measure light as some context of a year, but over time our years have changed in duration, which would allow us only to measure light as a constant in years from our current point of the duration of a year. If a year was twice as fast as it is now, then in fact light would be twice as fast numerically in order to remain a constant. This seems obvious to me, but I do have trouble explaining this to others.
As we measure decay there seems to be an attempt at making decay relevant to the thing itself. This makes sense since a half life for me is different than a half life for someone who is going to live twice as long as me. However the acceleration of half-life's as a rule of thumb is suspect, nonetheless, I did not start this diatribe to discuss half-lifes, but to understand decay. Unstable objects decay faster than stable objects. We are all nuclear objects in some form or another, albeit static rocks of living beings. My previous arguement that plastics will dissolve is reinforced by this concept that inert substances last longer because they are not decaying in the same way as hybrid polymers and compound chemicals do.
My brief studies in mineralogy taught me that the structure creates the item and the completeness of the structure is what is a visual representation of the inertness of the item itself. This non-binding effect of inert materials therefore creates minerals and minerals are by definition inert and subject then only to atomic decay, extreme heat and smashing into smaller pieces. Smaller pieces is where I come in and by getting minerals in very small, atomized, pieces I can bond them in a gypsum glud type of cement and continue their decay in an organized aestechically pleasing way. These minerals, metals, are as inert as I can get and by definition they are UV coated, which is the weak point in acrylics.
Now I can atleast have a discussion on the relevant point of decay if I understand the materials I am dealing with like Steel, Aluminum, Copper and Bronze. The binders are subject to decay before the materials that make up the image are. Also by definition there is no binder that can hold these items except gravity. By understanding this I have a newfound respect for silver print photography since the actual black and white image contained in the fixed geletin is silver particles which are not subject to decay, but the paper and chemicals that bind silver prints are subject to decay and are not simple. The gist of my understanding is that complex chemicals will break down faster than simple inert chemicals and if you want archival then you have to go inert.
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