In the Middle Ages, alchemists tried to turn various metals, including lead, into gold through different chemical reactions, but they were unsuccessful. They simply did not have a powerful particle accelerator.
Physicists from CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) were able to turn lead into gold during an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Thus, the dream of ancient alchemists became a reality, although this method of obtaining gold cannot accumulate vast wealth, writes Focus citing BGR.
Using the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, physicists conduct various experiments to uncover the mysteries of the universe. During an experiment to create quark-gluon plasma, which existed in the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang, scientists were able to obtain gold from lead.
To simulate the conditions that existed in the first moments after the birth of the universe, scientists collided lead atoms traveling almost at the speed of light. As a result, 86 billion atomic nuclei of gold were produced. Although this is an impressive figure, it actually amounts to only a trillionth of a gram of gold. Therefore, this method of creating gold cannot yield great wealth.
It is also important to note that the produced gold atoms are very unstable and existed for only a few microseconds. Thus, in this case, this alchemical miracle became somewhat of an obstacle to conducting the main experiment.
Lead and gold have different chemical and physical properties, meaning they are very different chemical elements. However, at the atomic level, the difference between them lies in the number of protons in the nucleus. Lead has 82 protons, while gold has 79 protons. This means that if three protons are removed from the nucleus of a lead atom, a gold atom can be obtained, and this process of transforming one element into another is called transmutation.
Physicists cannot precisely control the number of lost protons, but protons can be removed until in a few cases three are removed, which is what happened during the experiment.
However, removing protons remains a challenging task, as lead has an incredibly strong electromagnetic force that maintains the stability of its nucleus. To counteract this force, physicists used the force of near-collisions. When two particles pass each other at speeds close to the speed of light, their individual electromagnetic fields momentarily affect each other. This field can strip protons from lead, transforming it into thallium, mercury, and gold, depending on the number of protons removed.
This method boils down to colliding particles with each other at high speeds and relying on randomness to obtain gold. The extremely small amount of gold produced, combined with the high costs and low reliability of this method, means that it cannot become a means of mass production of gold.
