71–80 of 310 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Sorta buried in there, but they do note that this is not the first time the transmutation of lead to gold has been accomplished, just the first time it’s been accomplished as near misses in a particle accelerator.
Well technically, the starting points were always other elements like bismuth, and not lead. I believe the authors checked, and noted that in the paper: https://journals.aps.org/prc/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevC.111.0... )
Now do lead -> BTC
Interestingly, the procedure involves bringing a device capable of colliding larger lead particles at lower velocities in the vicinity of someone with BTC. The actual collision is superfluous, and can sometimes be counterproductive.
So, the only thing alchemists needed was a large particle collider. They were way ahead of their time.
we just need a bigger transmutation circle bro, trust me, just one more transmutation circle, and we’ll finally turn organic material into gold, bro, just around the whole city bro, one more time
It 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 :)
Though rather than lead into gold, it's known stuff into unknown or previously unseen but predicted stuff.
So it is, in fact, a giant Alchemy machine. Newton would have been proud.
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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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It 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.
It is somehow radically simpler in terms of fundamental underlying rules, and radically more complex in terms of… I dunno, emergent complexity or something.
Edit: imagine,
Alchemist, “But then we were right, it is made up of a small number of tiny discrete elements at the lowest level?!?”
Modern physicist: “Oh man… ah, yeah, but here’s the thing about ‘discrete’…”
Earlier 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 ?