Chrome Memory Leak

For years now I've noticed from the Mac Activity Monitor that the Real Memory usage of various tabs that I have increases over time, even if I'm not accessing them. For convenience, I tend to keep a LOT of tabs open - 50+, so yes, fewer would relieve the situation. But please, forego any recommendations or comments on this - I run both my business and personal affairs on a single Mac, and really do benefit from having that many tabs open at once.

So, when I restart Chrome with those 50+ open, memory usage on my i5 3 GHz 6-core Intel Mac with 16 GB Mac is just fine: Chrome takes up perhaps 4-5 GB of memory, and my Mac runs just fine. But after a couple of days - and nights, when the memory amounts increase all by themselves with NO usage (can you say, "memory leak"?) - the Chrome Processes take up much more memory. Swap shows as 8-10 GB, and the whole Mac runs slowly. Until I quit and reboot Chrome.

I've read all sorts of comments on this Community and the web about how modern browsers take up more memory: yes, fine, that's why I bought a 16 GB Mac.

But why do the Chrome tabs increase in Real Memory usage over time, and all by themselves?!? Isn't that just a memory leak defect in Chrome?