Say you had a ring and you buried it a few feet below the ground. Would it stay a ring, or would it just break back down into the lump of metal it was before it was mined.
In: Chemistry
The key to your question is how you define “eventually”.
**Eventually** everything in the universe will break down to a homogeneous pool of hydrogen atoms equally spaced throughout the whole span of space.
Depending on the material of the ring, burying it in the ground will cause it to breakdown at different rates.
A gold ring, which is notoriously an inert material (meaning it doesn’t oxidize in the air) will last as a piece of gold for a very very long time.
An Iron ring, which is notoriously reactive with oxygen, will relatively quickly rust away (provided there’s enough oxygen present to facilitate rusting).
It depends on the metal and the composition of the soil. Most precious metals like gold, platinum and silver will stay in their current form indefinitely, but metals like iron will rust.
It depends on the degree to which the metal oxidizes and the degree of exposure to oxygen, and to some extent exposure to certain kinds of bacteria that can eat metal.
For example, iron is often pointed to as quickly degrading under oxygen exposure, and you’ve probably seen a piece of rusty metal nearly falling apart. However, gold is the counter example since it does not rapidly oxidize and for all intents and purposes will stay in tact indefinitely.
All this is caveated by the fact that time will ultimately win against all metals. The time-scales are massive, but “eventually” the metal will degrade.
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