Physicists turn lead into gold in scientific first

Alchemists eat your heart out.Researchers at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider achieved the once-impossible dream of alchemists by turning lead into gold — but only for a split second.The world’s largest particle accelerator shocked the scientific world by transmuting particles of the base metal into the precious metal through a newly-innovated mechanism that utilized near-miss interactions, the organization said in a statement.CERN experiments usually slam particles together at extreme speeds as researchers glean what they can from the split-second interactions of tiny elements in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the material nature of the universe.To manifest the gold nuclei, CERN nerds didn’t slam the particles together — instead, they crafted a near-miss between lead nuclei particles, allowing the almost-contact to generate a transmuting electromagnetic field.“The electromagnetic field emanating from a lead nucleus is particularly strong because the nucleus contains 82 protons, each carrying an elementary charge,” CERN said.

“To create gold (a nucleus containing 79 protons), three protons must be removed from a lead nucleus in the [Large Hadron Collider] beams.”When the lead nuclei are accelerated to “99.999993% of the speed of light,” they “pancake” and experience short-lived pulses of photons called “electromagnetic dissociation” that can alter the internal structure of the particles.“Thanks to the unique capabilities of the ALICE ZDCs, the present analysis is the first to systematically detect and analyze the signature of gold production at the LHC experimentally,” said Uliana Dmitrieave of CERN, according to the release.CERN scientists measured 86 billion gold nuclei in four major experiments — which amounts to just 29 picograms of the substance and which existed only for a tiny fraction of a second.“While the dream of medieval alchemists has technically come true, their hopes of riches have once again been dashe...