Today’s science is a far cry from the ancient pursuit of alchemy. Back then, scholars dreamed of turning base metals into gold—a quest they never realized. Interestingly, though, modern physicists can do just that, at least in theory. They can create tiny amounts of gold using technologies like particle accelerators. But it’s not as straightforward as it sounds! You’ll need a lot of energy and funding.
CERN, home to the Large Hadron Collider, has harnessed this knowledge. In an experiment called ALICE, scientists crashed lead particles into each other at near-light speed to mimic the conditions right after the Big Bang. They produced an astounding 86 billion gold nuclei. However, this amount is incredibly tiny—only a trillionth of a gram!
Despite the achievement, this gold isn’t usable. It’s so minuscule that special equipment is needed to detect it. The produced gold atoms are unstable, lasting only about a microsecond before turning into other particles. So, this experiment is more of a scientific curiosity than a source of wealth.
At the atomic level, gold and lead differ mainly in their proton counts. Gold has 79 protons, while lead has 82. Theoretically, removing three protons from lead could yield gold. While it’s a tantalizing idea, we can only manage to knock off protons by chance during high-energy collisions.
Lead’s strong electromagnetic forces make it tough to strip protons away. When lead particles collide at high speeds, their electromagnetic fields interact briefly, enabling scientists to change proton counts. This random chance occasionally results in gold, but the quantities produced are simply too small and costly to be practical.
CERN isn’t the first to create gold artificially. Back in 1941, scientists managed to turn mercury into an unstable, radioactive gold. In 1980, research led by Glenn T. Seaborg showed that gold could also come from bismuth. However, this method wasn’t pursued due to the difficulties in handling unstable isotopes.
In 2002 and 2004, CERN scientists documented producing gold from lead through near-miss collisions with better precision than previous attempts. Even though the amounts remain tiny, this work is a breakthrough compared to earlier efforts. If ongoing research continues successfully, we may inch closer to reliable gold production in the future.
For more on this groundbreaking science, check out the Guinness World Record for gold production. As we stand at the intersection of science and alchemy, it’s clear that history has much to teach us about our modern advancements.
