Science
Scientists Shock World By Turning Lead Into Gold — But There’s A Catch
Scientists at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider have made history by successfully turning lead into gold, generating 89,000 atoms per second in a discovery that would have made mediaeval alchemists jealous.
Atoms are smashed together at extremely high speeds by the massive particle accelerator known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). There, researchers have discovered a method for converting lead atoms into gold atoms by removing three little particles known as protons.
The ALICE cooperation, the team responsible for this discovery, produced gold in a novel way. They examined what occurs when lead atoms just miss one another rather than colliding head-on. When this occurs, strong electromagnetic fields surrounding the atoms can transform them into other elements, according to researchers.
“It’s impressive that our detectors can handle both major collisions that create thousands of particles and these smaller events that make just a few particles at a time,” Marco Van Leeuwen, who leads the ALICE project, said in a press release.
How much gold did they make?
Around 86 billion gold atoms were produced by the scientists during one set of tests, which ran from 2015 to 2018. Although that may seem like a lot, scientists have found that the total weight of all that gold is just approximately 29 picogrammes, or less than a trillionth of a gramme. To create even a small item of jewellery, billions of times more would be required.
Although the machine can produce roughly 89,000 gold atoms each second, each atom only lasts a very brief moment before disintegrating. Although the machine’s capacity to produce gold has nearly doubled due to recent improvements, it is still far from being useful.
This is the first time that scientists have been able to identify and investigate gold creation at the LHC in this manner, said Uliana Dmitrieva, a scientist for the ALICE project.
“Thanks to the unique capabilities of the ALICE ZDCs, the present analysis is the first to systematically detect and analyse the signature of gold production at the LHC experimentally,” Dmitrieva stated in the press statement.
The research isn’t just about making gold
“These experiments help us understand how particles behave, which is important for improving the LHC and building future particle colliders,” said John Jowett, another team member.
“The results also test and improve theoretical models of electromagnetic dissociation, which, beyond their intrinsic physics interest, are used to understand and predict beam losses that are a major limit on the performance of the LHC and future colliders,” Jowett stated in the press statement.
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