In a split second, CERN scientists turned lead into gold

As a result of collisions of particles at very high speeds, lead, which has only three more protons than gold, has lost enough protons to turn into a precious metal for a very short time. The publication informs about this Profit.ro .

One of the highest goals of medieval alchemy was achieved, but only for a fraction of a second. Scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, have succeeded in turning lead into gold using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator. The LHC experiments involve the collision of subatomic particles at high speeds in order to manipulate the physical properties of lead and turn it into gold.

The tank is often used to crush lead ions in order to create extremely hot and dense matter, similar to that observed in the universe after the Big Bang. When performing this analysis, CERN scientists observed boundary events, as a result of which the lead nucleus lost neutrons or protons. Lead atoms have only three more protons than gold atoms, which means that in some cases the TANK causes lead atoms to lose enough protons to turn into a gold atom for a split second, and then immediately disintegrate into many particles.

According to CERN, during the experiments conducted between 2015 and 2018, only about 29 picograms of gold were obtained. The organization claims that during the latest tests, twice as much of this amount was "mined", but the mass produced is still trillions of times less than necessary for the precious metal.