Physicists turn lead into gold, by a second fraction
The scientists of the famous European collision created gold ions created by lead in a modern turn on the alchemical objective
LHC experiments do not create large gold nuggets, but some particles within a lead of lead ions can become gold for approximately a microsecond.
SlowMotiongli/Getty Images
The dream of the seventeenth century alchemists has been made by physicists in the Great Hadron Colider (LHC), who have turned lead into gold-albeit for only a fraction of a second and a tremendous cost.
The non -mysterious transmutation occurred in the CERN, the PHYSICS Laboratory of Europe, near Geneva, Switzerland, where the multimillionaire LHC crushes lead ions for a portion of each experimental race.
The first chemicals hoped to convert abundant lead to precious gold. But the differences in the number of protons between the elements (82 for lead and 79 for gold) made it impossible by chemical means.
About support for scientific journalism
If you are enjoying this article, consider support our journalism awarded with Subscription. When buying a subscription, it is helping to guarantee the future of shocking stories about the discoveries and ideas that shape our world today.
The CERN researchers achieved the feat when aiming at each other’s lead rays, traveling at the speed of light. The ions occasionally look at each other, instead of hitting straight ahead. When this happens, the intense electromagnetic field around an ion can create an energy pulse that triggers a leading lead core to expel three protons, making it gold.
The Alice detector in CERN.
The LHC Alice experiment leaked these instances of transmutation of the broader collision remains. In an analysis published on May 7 in Physical review magazinesThe team estimated that between 2015 and 2018, collisions in the LHC created 86 billion golden centers, around 29 billionths of one gram. Most unstable and rapid movement atoms would have lasted about 1 microsecond before breaking into an experimental apparatus or breaking elsewhere.
Gold is being done at any time that lead beams are collided in the LHC, but Alice is the only experiment with the detector configured to detect this process. The analysis “is the first to systematically detect and analysis of the gold production firm in the LHC experimentally,” says Uliana Dmitrieva, physics and member of the Alice’s collaboration.
Another CERN accelerator called SPS observed that lead changed in gold from 2002 to 2004, says Jianganong Jia, a physicist from Stony Brook University in New York. But the latest experiments are in high energy, have a great ability to create gold and make much cleaner observations, he adds.
CERN researchers have no plans to assume the creation of gold as a lateral hustle, but they say that a better understanding of how photons can change the nuclei will help them improve the performance of the LHC. “Understanding such processes is crucial to control the quality and stability of the beam,” says Jia.
This article reproduces with permission and laundry. First published May 9, 2025.
]