News [off topic] CERN's Large Hadron Collider turns lead into gold

[StefanR5R]

The ALICE collaboration (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) at CERN now measured for the first time the transmutation of lead into gold: They accelerated lead nuclei to 99.999993% of the speed of light and let them woosh past each other in near misses. Electromagnetic effects during the close fly-by cause the nuclei to oscillate and possibly lose a few neutrons and protons. If three protons are lost, gold is created.
https://home.cern/news/news/physics/alice-detects-conversion-lead-gold-lhc

But the process leaves room for improvement:

Spoiler: caveats

– During several years of experimenting, only picograms of gold were created.
– Fractions of seconds after being turned from lead into gold, these nuclei randomly crashed onto various LHC gear and splattered into particles e.g. single protons and neutrons.

While the dream of medieval alchemists has technically come true, their hopes of riches have once again been dashed.

 

[BGod]

If it were easy, factories would be built to churn the stuff out by the truck load.