Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if the ability to transform one element into any other element was cheap and readily available. Probably everything would be destroyed in no time.
ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
141–150 of 310 posts
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#142Earlier 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…
The analog is no good because it assumes people have an intuitive understanding of the volume of the Earth, which basically 0 people do because it's stupidly absurdly counter-intuitive (like volume in general). So let's go for something way smaller. Imagine we take just one little 'cube' of Earth that's just 1 mile on each side. And let's start placing boxes in it that are 1 cubic foot in size, so about the size of a micro microwave. How many of these boxes would it take to fill our little cube? The math is simple, but the answer is no less stupefying or counter-intuitive. It's more than 147 billion!!
Ok. Imagine we take those cubes that filled our 'little' cube of earth and taped them in one giant stack. That stack would not only reach to the Moon, but reach to the Moon 116 times over! In fact you'd be nearly able to reach Mars at its closest approach (34.8 million miles, vs 27.8 million miles for our box stack). And that's in 1 cubic mile of volume. The volume of Earth is about 260 billion cubic miles. To wrap up by getting back to golf balls - you can fit about 700 golf balls in 1 cubic ft.
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Actually a somewhat macabre example came to mind. How many humans could we fit in our little cubic mile? And the answer is literally all of us, many times over in fact! And that's in just one cubic mile of the 260 billion total on Earth.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#143Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
At 10 picograms per year, that'll be a while
They just need to build a few billion LHCs to scale up production
There are about 2.44*10^11 grams of gold in circulation. Let's say the LHC would need to produce 10% of that per year to "flood the market." With the current production rate of 10^-11 grams per year, we'd need 2.44*10^21 (2.44 sextillion) LHCs operating simultaneously to flood the gold market.
A single LHC weighs 3.6*10^9 grams, so 2.44 sextillion of them would weigh 8.8*10^31 grams, which is about 50 times the mass of the sun.
So in a way, all of those people who were concerned about the LHC creating a black hole would be right.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#145So, the only thing alchemists needed was a large particle collider. They were way ahead of their time.
who knew the philosopher’s stone needs to have a ring shape and buried deep under ground
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The analog is no good because it assumes people have an intuitive understanding of the volume of the Earth, which basically 0 people do because it's stupidly absurdly counter-intuitive (like volume in general). So let's go for something way smaller. Imagine we take just one little 'cube' of Earth that's just 1 mile on each side. And let's start placing boxes in it that are 1 cubic foot in size, so about the size of a…
Is this going to be on the test, Professor?
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#147Did my thesis research at Brookhaven National Lab, home of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), which is the predecessor of the heavy ion program at the LHC.
While there, one of the more senior scientists relayed an exchange from an ongoing review of the program. At the time, RHIC was colliding gold in the heavy ion program.
One of the reviewers asked if RHIC could save money by switching to a cheaper element, like lead. None of the RHIC representatives knew what to say. I don't remember the exact numbers, but RHIC used something like < 1 milligram of gold over the lifetime of the program.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#148The 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.
Should have called it ALCHEMY instead of ALICE. Missed opportunity
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Avogadro was a weird looking guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amadeo_Avogadro.png
It looks like his MIND=BLOWN, then popped and re-inflated in Theme Hospital. It just goes to show how dangerous it is to think about such big numbers.
Re: ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC
#150Gold-197? The article does not specify.
Au-203 (it's in the article).