ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
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Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#2This is specifically a new way of converting lead into gold (in sub-microscopic, radioactive quantities) from the near-misses at CERN, not just direct target bombardment inside a particle accelerator.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#3ALHCemy?
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#4Alchemists are vindicated.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#5It does make you wonder whether the physicists obsession [1] of turning base metals into gold - is the real reason for the LHC :-)
[1] Newton famously spent around 30 years of his life on alchemy ( the other stuff were really side projects )
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#6So, the only thing alchemists needed was a large particle collider. They were way ahead of their time.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#729 picograms.
Just need to scale it by 1000000000000x to get a money printer.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#8Something from l Ron Hubbard’s mission earth scifi series has stuck with me for years. Basically in preparation for an undercover mission to earth the protagonist (who’s more of an antagonist really) goes to a place in his city full of fusion plants and orders a bunch of gold to bring with him. It ends up being so much gold that it would crash the earth’s economies…
But what stuck with me was this idea of ordering elements on demand.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#9It does make you wonder whether the physicists obsession [1] of turning base metals into gold - is the real reason for the LHC :-) [1] Newton famously spent around 30 years of his life on alchemy ( the other stuff were really side projects )
The Ars Magna abides I suppose? I really do think that alchemists would find the modern age of chemistry fascinating, if they could get over the horror of realizing that their religious theories of nature would require immense modification.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#10It does make you wonder whether the physicists obsession [1] of turning base metals into gold - is the real reason for the LHC :-) [1] Newton famously spent around 30 years of his life on alchemy ( the other stuff were really side projects )
No, this is fun.
It was long known it can be achieved, but it's prohibitively expensive :)