Do Cables Wear Out?

SPL: "Electron particle flow," whatever that is, does not cause cables to break down, or wear in any way. Neither, in general, does passing a current through a wire. If it did, you'd have to rip out all the wiring in your house every few years and replace it.

I assume your friend is not trying to sell you cables. However, people who do sell cables are prone to this sort of nonsense claim (for obvious reasons). Your friend may have heard this somewhere and didn't realize he was being spun.

It all depends on your AC. If your utility company supplies you with dirty AC, the electron flow often contains impurities that are significantly abrasive, toxic and corrosive. Especially if the utility company is purchasing AC from power plants that burn dirty Cole and do not apply good scrubbing techniques in their stacks to eliminate sulphur ions from the generated electricity, or do not burn Cole in well fluidified Dolomite beds. The usage of such dirty AC on expensive high current amps WILL lead to premature wear and tear of all conductors. Similarly AC from nuclear plants that are not adequately protected can be somewhat radioactive. In this case electrons in the flow can give off fast neutrons and even gamma rays, that are known to be structurelly deleterious to your equipment. You should try to use AC from renewable resources only to ensure the long term stability of your system. Better power utilities in the country give consumer the choice of receiving AC from renewable sources -- also called Organic Power -- for a small premium. . . . it's a little more expensive than regular dirty AC, but our stereos are worth it!

Im not worried about my cables coming apart, nor do I subcribe to sales pitches trying so sell you a lot in the desert. I merely felt this a worthy topic of discussion. And to boot Van den hul uses carbon I believe for this very reason.
Where I was using the word particle I meant and should have been usinig the word "Crystal" as my friend corrected me. Im also saying I have not heard this degradation myself, yet. Here is an excerpt by a respectable leader in the industry. For further reading, http://www.vandenhul.nl/artpap/hybrid.htm
PS the metal he refers to below is copper and silver as further reading reveals.

By: A.J. van den Hul CD
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First a short discussion on metal conductors and their vulnerabilities:
Due to the current cable manufacturing processes based on economics and aging, all metal conductors are sensitive to growing chemical boundaries at the edges of their internal crystals.
These chemical boundaries form non-linear conductive barriers for the electrical signal to be transferred.
The main reason for the origination of these chemical boundaries is the rough industrial handling of the basic material during the manufacturing of the single leads by pulling the metal through many dies and the unprotected storage in between. Especially the bare storage of the drawn wires on reels in the open air creates another problem: chemical interaction with airborne reactive components and their subsequent deeper propagation into the metal during the next processing steps.
As you can imagine, the result is that the final conductor still looks like a conductor, but on microscale does not exactly behave like one anymore.

As a side note, apparantely Audience think the bending and handling of cables will also affect performance. Below is an extract from its website.

"But did you know the act of bending them irrevocably damages the conductors? This bending stresses the metal and causes fractures along the circumference of the bend.....Damage to conductors is why some cords need "break-in" every time the are moved or bent. This is because current passing through the conductor partially repairs damage by micro-welding some of the damaged area. This helps but it will never restore the cable to its original state or it's original performance potential"

V.D.Hul is right. Another issue is that the cables are often emotionally stunted from the rough words they hear from factory workmen while still in their formative stages. The best manufacturers buy cable from a secret plant in Sweden, all workers are virgins, men handle the bass conductors and wimen take care of the rest, the nature of the shop requires that the virgins are ugly (or have another job lined up) but happily this has been found to make the cables sound more real. Birds sing constantly during the manufacturing process, temperature is held at a constant 76 degrees f with 42% relative humidity, and the shop is always lit to resemble the first hour of morning on a great new day.