F fusion! Alchemy is real. We're rich!
ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
61–70 of 310 posts
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#62Random question. Historically, why have Lead and Gold been so closely linked? Why did alchemist focus on turning lead into gold (and not start with iron, or a rock like quartz)? Is it just because they're two heavy soft metals?
Most likely because lead was used for faking coins. Lead covered in a thin layer of gold. You know that coin biting move from movies about middle ages? It was to check if you’re dealing with gold or lead. So lead was the impersonation of the fake. Turning a fake into the real deal.
I thought the coin bite was just to check that it left an indentation. How would you use it to differentiate gold from lead? They're both soft.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#63The relevant part: "The ALICE analysis shows that, during Run 2 of the LHC (2015–2018), about 86 billion gold nuclei were created at the four major experiments. In terms of mass, this corresponds to just 29 picograms (2.9 ×10-11 g)." Just need to scale it by trillions to make 1 ounce, but transmutation of lead to gold - the dream of many alchemists - is now just a by product of particle accelerators.
The scale here is absolutely nuts to me. 86 billion nuclei represent only 29 picograms. One gram is 10^12 picograms. 1,000 billion billion gold nuclei per gram of gold.
Avogadro's number has a 10^23 in it to account for this atom-->physical matter sort of "scale up" conversion. Atoms are really small...
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you’re worried about your funding getting cut, transmuting lead into gold is one way to get around that.
CERN's budget has not really had a budget cut or a need to justify its budget. Nor does it have extra money flowing, mind you. It's also really cheap for member states all things considered, I think as a french citizen I "pay" 5 euros per year or something like that for CERN ?
I’m just being glib. As an American I admire the EU’s commitment towards funding scientific endeavors. I still lament that our government abandoned the Superconducting Supercollider in the early 90’s to save money… right around the time our economy was about to boom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#65Random question. Historically, why have Lead and Gold been so closely linked? Why did alchemist focus on turning lead into gold (and not start with iron, or a rock like quartz)? Is it just because they're two heavy soft metals?
Maybe because the weight was "close enough", at least closer than iron, so they figured they must be closely related. So we just need a "little bit" of work to it make shiny and beautiful and 40% heavier or so.
And I am sure they tried to change silver to gold as well. It's even closer in weight so an even a smaller changer is needed.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#66fun-fact: kilonovas can produce "earth sized" chunks of gold
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/27/world/kilanova-gold-2016-scn-...
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#67The relevant part: "The ALICE analysis shows that, during Run 2 of the LHC (2015–2018), about 86 billion gold nuclei were created at the four major experiments. In terms of mass, this corresponds to just 29 picograms (2.9 ×10-11 g)." Just need to scale it by trillions to make 1 ounce, but transmutation of lead to gold - the dream of many alchemists - is now just a by product of particle accelerators.
The scale here is absolutely nuts to me. 86 billion nuclei represent only 29 picograms. One gram is 10^12 picograms. 1,000 billion billion gold nuclei per gram of gold.
> The scale here is absolutely nuts to me.
Being able to detect these tiny amounts is nuts to me.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#68Random question. Historically, why have Lead and Gold been so closely linked? Why did alchemist focus on turning lead into gold (and not start with iron, or a rock like quartz)? Is it just because they're two heavy soft metals?
Because alchemists were afraid of people stealing their recipes. Jabir bin Hayyan (aka Geber) the father of chemistry wrote in his own shorthand which is named after him—-gibberish or jibberish. So Lead, gold, and quicksilver were not the substances their names suggest. They were codenames. The real processes have never been revealed.
The proposed etymology of gibberish is interesting, but unfortunately untrue :)
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#69There are much easier ways to convert lead into gold.
If neutrons could be made an order of magnitude cheaper (hello, Helion?), conversion of Hg-196 into gold by neutron capture might even be economical. The isotope would have to be separated but there's an interesting way of doing that using magnetic separation of electronically excited atoms. The total gold production would be just a fraction of current global gold production from mines.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine who was into alchemy, told me it was because the difference was only three protons. I don't if early alchemists knew that or why not consider metals that are less than three protons different from gold.
no, alchemists didn't know about protons
Yes they were closer to thinking that everything was fundamentally made from earth, wind, fire, and water.