From the Nightspeech Bulletin Board

Vultur10

Sep 16 13 7:55 PM

Does anyone know if artifacts made from a "non rusting" metal like titanium would survive, in any shape to be useful, after two or three million years (in cold dry air)?

The Master Monstruwacan

Sep 18 13 11:34 PM

I'm pretty sure that you can start by looking at what turns up in nature as raw metal (I.e. having survived 4 billion years in every conceivable environment without decaying or combining). That leaves you with gold and platinum and, uh, whatever else can get mined as nuggets. Native Metal

But you leave out the crucial variable. We live in Hell. Cold dry desert air is still full of OXYGEN and that is a terribly corrosive, reactive, gas. Are these things surface or buried? And WHAT IS THE RADIATION SITUATION - lots of UV? Or eternal darkness like, um, the environment inside a big crack in the Earth after the sun has gone out, to pick a location at random?. Ultraviolet will knock out electrons and so force reaction with the O2. So you WILL get a surface layer of oxides. The question then becomes how tough these oxides are, and how much physical abrasion the object endures. Assuming the object has no physical abrasion (water running, sand storms, etc) and is not being blasted by UV I think metals that form tough oxide surface layers would last looooooooooong time. I.E make sure they are indoors and they could last.

Vultur10

Sep 22 13 10:33 AM

Ah, thanks.

Yeah, indoors, no sunlight, and titanium oxide forms a tough surface layer IIRC. So cool.