Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

home.cern

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 310 posts

Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

#111

Post by jstanley »

lovecg wrote: post #86
sebmellen wrote: post #54

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.

The analogy I heard was that if you take a golf ball and enlarge it to the size of the Earth, the atoms in the enlarged golf ball would be about the size of the original golf ball.

It took me a while to understand this comment, because I imagined that scaling up a golf ball would involve creating new atoms, but what you said only makes sense if you are scaling up the individual atoms.

What you're saying is that the ratio of the size of an atom to the size of a golf ball is approximately the same as the ratio of the size of a golf ball to the size of the earth.

I'm surprised atoms are so big, I would have guessed much smaller.

Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

#112

Post by DrScientist »

orsenthil wrote: post #104
subscribed wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is fun. It was long known it can be achieved, but it's prohibitively expensive :)

> It was long known it can be achieved, but it's prohibitively expensive :) Really? I thought, it was one of the Newton's doom which couldn't be achieved. When did humanity know alchemy is a real science?

The knowledge about the possibility comes from nuclear physics ( not sure about dates here - 1900-1940s? ) - however there is a difference between theoretical possibility and can actually be made to happen in the lab - I think that wasn't experimentally shown until the 1970's or 1980s.

Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

#114

Post by tadfisher »

jstanley wrote: post #111
lovecg wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy I heard was that if you take a golf ball and enlarge it to the size of the Earth, the atoms in the enlarged golf ball would be about the size of the original golf ball.

It took me a while to understand this comment, because I imagined that scaling up a golf ball would involve creating new atoms, but what you said only makes sense if you are scaling up the individual atoms. What you're saying is that the ratio of the size of an atom to the size of a golf ball is approximately the same as the ratio of the size of a golf ball to the size of the earth. I'm surprised atoms are so big, I…

Now consider that most of that volume is empty space. Scaling up an atom such that a nucleus is the size of the Sun, you'd end up with an electron cloud about the size of the planetary solar system.

Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

#115

Post by pipo234 »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #57
omnee wrote: post #42

The 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.

Ran the numbers. The LHC would break even if the price of gold was $48 trillion trillion per ounce.

I just saw the price for lead jump up!

Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

#116

Post by deepsun »

jstanley wrote: post #111
lovecg wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy I heard was that if you take a golf ball and enlarge it to the size of the Earth, the atoms in the enlarged golf ball would be about the size of the original golf ball.

It took me a while to understand this comment, because I imagined that scaling up a golf ball would involve creating new atoms, but what you said only makes sense if you are scaling up the individual atoms. What you're saying is that the ratio of the size of an atom to the size of a golf ball is approximately the same as the ratio of the size of a golf ball to the size of the earth. I'm surprised atoms are so big, I…

But that comment is about atoms, while ALICE is talking about nuclei, which are way smaller than atoms. Not sure what would be the analogy there.

Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

#117

Post by highwaylights »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #57
omnee wrote: post #42

The 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.

Ran the numbers. The LHC would break even if the price of gold was $48 trillion trillion per ounce.

Shhh keep that to yourself. He might even fund science again!

Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

#118

Post by evertedsphere »

frainfreeze wrote: post #91
Geee wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avogadro was a weird looking guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amadeo_Avogadro.png

Aren't we all a bit weird looking? I'm more entertained that URL was already in my browser history

it's hn greying out the post

Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

#119

Post by chrisweekly »

sebmellen wrote: post #54
omnee wrote: post #42

The 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.

Yeah. I think most ppl (incl me) lack strong intuition about things at scales outside our human day-to-day. Reminds me of a conversation about wealth, someone said "The difference between a million and a billion is... about a billion."

Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

#120

Post by hasmanean »

andrewshadura wrote: post #68
hasmanean wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

It was declared untrue in 1818 by Johnson’s dictionary.

But that’s just 1 vote. ;)

Post reply on HN