Modern science, specifically nuclear physics, has achieved the age-old alchemical dream of turning lead into gold, although not for practical or commercial purposes.
Scientists with the ALICE collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located near Geneva (partially in France), have successfully converted lead into gold. This was accomplished by colliding lead nuclei at near-light speeds.
Here’s how it happened:
Instead of head-on collisions, the lead nuclei narrowly missed each other.
Their intense electromagnetic fields interacted, creating a pulse of energy.
This energy pulse caused some lead nuclei (with 82 protons) to eject three protons.
With 79 protons, the transformed nucleus became a gold atom.
The ALICE experiment used Zero Degree Calorimeters (ZDCs) to detect and analyze these events.
Key Details:
The gold atoms produced are incredibly tiny, on the scale of atomic nuclei.
They exist for only a fleeting moment (approximately 1 microsecond) before breaking apart.
Between 2015 and 2018 (during the LHC’s Run 2), approximately 86 billion gold nuclei were created, amounting to a total mass of about 29 picograms (2.9 x 10⁻¹¹ g).
This process demonstrates nuclear transmutation, a change in the atomic nucleus, rather than a chemical reaction.
The significance of this achievement lies in advancing the understanding of matter, energy, and the extreme conditions of the universe, rather than any commercial application.