Dripstone/geode growth speed

To make dripstone more or less realistic in terms of speed of growth, I would suggest a very long (or even datapack-optional) growth tick, or a slightly different idea (detailed below). The reasoning being this: if you tour a RL cave where dripstone and other limestone formations are featured, the tour guide will very adamantly order the tourists to please not touch ANYTHING, as these formations take centuries or even millennia to get to they size they are now, and that finger oils can immediately stunt their further growth and damage them for future generations.

While thinking about this I had an interesting idea which may also apply to crystals forming in geodes. If I'm not mistaken, each chunk (or region) has a 'last accessed' variable, which is how some cleanup mods are able to reduce file sizes of their worlds: by deleting generated but unused chunks after a set amount of time.

My idea inverts the thinking that "the chunk has to be loaded for ticks to occur". That being, when a region or chunk where a geode/dripstone cave exists is accessed, the engine would perform a quick calculation to determine how much time was passed since the last access time. The longer that chunk was unaccessed, the more growth would immediately occur in those formations. This would, in a practical sense, encourage the player to tread lightly or leave that particular area alone completely after generating (and presumably discovering) it in order for these formations to evolve.