CERN scientists successfully turn lead into gold

Achieving the dreams of many medieval alchemists, a team at CERN in Geneva has confirmed that it is possible to turn lead into gold. However, before we start dreaming of riches beyond our wildest dreams, getting the Midas touch is still very much out of reach.

CERN cracks the secret to alchemy

In a piece published in the Physical Review Journals, CERN confirmed that as they were conducting experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the machine (briefly) turned into a real-life Philosopher’s Stone, transforming lead into pure gold. The new innovation was first uncovered during tests between 2015 and 2018, but the gold was only noticed and measured later.

The transformation occurred during regular experiments at CERN, where they used the Large Hadron Collider to collide lead particles travelling at the speed of light. Smashing lead nuclei together at such a high speed can produce plasma, a key element which filled the universe a millionth of a second after the Big Bang.

However, more often than not, the lead nuclei being fired through the 27-kilometre-long LHC miss each other, sometimes by just a hair’s breadth. When this happens, an intense magnetic field is created between the passing lead particles, causing their internal structure to vibrate and some of their neutrons and protons to eject, changing their composition.

“To produce gold (a nucleus with 79 protons), three protons must be removed from a lead nucleus in the LHC beams,” CERN wrote. Therefore, in trying to find the secrets buried at the beginning of the cosmos, they had inadvertently created gold.

CERN makes lead from gold: What's the catch?

Though the discovery is the culmination of thousands of years of alchemy, you shouldn’t quit your job and buy a house now that you know CERN’s secret. The organisation noted that the total amount of gold produced in this highly energy and cost-intensive process was trillions of times smaller than what is needed to produce a piece of jewellery, let alone a bar of gold.

What’s more, the process itself would have to be refined if we are to turn the LHC into a gold mine. CERN noted that the “gold only exists for a tiny fraction of a second” in the collider before it is destroyed. 

“The medieval alchemists’ dream may have technically come true, but their hopes of riches have once again been dashed,” they concluded.