Scientists at CERN Turn Lead Into Gold
Greek Reporter,
by
Abdul Moeed
Original Article
Posted By: JoElla Bee,
5/9/2025 10:27:45 PM
Scientists at CERN have turned lead into gold during high-speed experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), achieving a phenomenon once confined to ancient legend. The findings, published by the ALICE collaboration in Physical Review Journals, confirm that gold atoms can form under extreme conditions created during heavy-ion collisions at the LHC. While the transformation is temporary and cannot be harnessed for practical use, it marks a major scientific milestone. For centuries, alchemists have attempted to turn common metals into gold. This concept, once dismissed as pseudoscience, has now gained experimental footing.
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Reply 1 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 5/9/2025 10:32:58 PM (No. 1947779)
The Alchemists' dream... gee, I bet that didn't cost too much, did it?
14 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
DVC 5/9/2025 11:51:26 PM (No. 1947798)
Cute science trick to get some headlines.
9 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
konocti95 5/10/2025 12:10:06 AM (No. 1947804)
What they don't want us to know about are the gigantic piles of bulls#!tium they make every week.
14 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
jayjeti 5/10/2025 1:13:47 AM (No. 1947807)
As the price of gold keeps rising, maybe someday this conversion could pay for itself.
1 person likes this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Lawsy0 5/10/2025 1:38:00 AM (No. 1947808)
To think, it only took 2500 lifetimes to move alchemy from myth to reality. Now what will happen to the "gold standard?"
5 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
red1066 5/10/2025 7:40:56 AM (No. 1947874)
Billions of dollars spent to build this thing, and scientists apparently have run out of experiments to perform on it. So now they are just screwing around making it look like they're doing important work. I hope there is some practical application that can be done with this thing, and not just some Sheldon Cooper experiment.
4 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Hermit_Crab 5/10/2025 7:49:22 AM (No. 1947880)
Nothing new. Glenn Seaborg did it in 1980.
2 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Strike3 5/10/2025 7:57:17 AM (No. 1947887)
The ultimate result will be to make gold worthless and everybody who has invested their retirement in gold bars will retire in a hut in the forest but will have plenty of shiny jewelry to wear.
2 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
jdano 5/10/2025 7:57:56 AM (No. 1947889)
A very expensive toy.
3 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
JHHolliday 5/10/2025 9:01:10 AM (No. 1947913)
Interesting but not practical yet. I wonder if this will affect the gold price in some way even though it's of no use at the present time. Platinum, lithium, silver or any valuable metals coming in the future?
1 person likes this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
NamVet70 5/10/2025 9:02:10 AM (No. 1947914)
I think it would probably be more profitable to use a computer to mine digital currency than to use a particle accelerator to create gold.
1 person likes this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
homefry 5/10/2025 9:05:12 AM (No. 1947915)
Alchemy huh? I'm calling shennagins on that one.
3 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
bpl40 5/10/2025 10:02:29 AM (No. 1947947)
The ultimate goal of CERN is to unlock the 'basic truth'. What is at the origin of the process that resulted in the Universe we see around us. That goal is unattainable because there is literally (an) endless path from compounds to 92 elements to atomic particles proton neutron electron to the particle zoo of the Standard Model. God deliberately made it endless.
0 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
LC Chihuahua 5/10/2025 10:51:42 AM (No. 1947978)
How much energy did the collider use for the transformation. I believe the collider is quite the energy hog. Would it ever be cost effective?
Lead is periodic number 82 and gold is 79. Did they make any mercury (80) or thallium (81)?
2 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
Snow Possum 5/10/2025 11:06:43 AM (No. 1947984)
ALL heavy elements were created from less heavy ones in the very early universe.
1 person likes this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
Highlander 5/10/2025 11:35:02 AM (No. 1947998)
Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for table top fusion to be marketed. I can sure use a good toaster.
2 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
franq 5/10/2025 12:42:39 PM (No. 1948026)
Sounds like they bombarded a few atomsand deemed the experiment a success. No practical use, as the article says.
0 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
chance_232 5/10/2025 12:59:30 PM (No. 1948035)
If I recall, there is a reactor out there that will create gold. In very small quantities.
Truth number 1. This is a side result. The cost to make gold in any quantity would be cost prohibitive. By a lot.
Truth 2. The Lead atom has 82 protons. The gold atom has 79. Knock 3 protons, no more, no less from a lead atom and your left with a gold atom. Do that 8.72 times 10 to the 22nd power and you have $3000.00 worth of probably radioactive gold.
1 person likes this.
Mankind has known theoretically how to do this since at least the 1950s. However, the cost in energy exceeds the value of the gold which might be produced. It was never worth the effort to resolve the practical application of doing so. I suspect that this was the side effect of other experiments. Perhaps, they were working on other things which used the techniques necessary to do this, realized that turning lead into gold would capture more attention than whatever they were actually working on (and accomplish some, or all, of the goals of that other experiment).
0 people like this.
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