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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

#161

Post by cookingmyserver »

As an aside, I've always thought of this when listening to discussions of technological advancement. I often hear the argument that in the early 20th century many people thought we were near the apex of technology. That often gets brought up when people claim the same today. I don't think we are quite there, but I get a feeling that the limit we are approaching is more a limit, not of knowledge, but of resources and engineering.

We have literal alchemy, but we don't have the capability to make useful amounts of gold. It is not that we don't know how to, but that it is not practical. How much more will material science, chemistry, and maybe even physics give us in practical (technology-wise) knowledge? Plenty for sure, but I don't think our rate of technological advancement will continue in these fields. That said, we have so much to learn even if it is not immediately applicable to technology.

Where I think there is an absolute abundance of applicable and practical knowledge to be collected is in the fields of biochemistry and biology. We haven't even scratched the surface there. We may never find a way to travel faster than light but if we can adapt our bodies to last for hundreds or thousands of years in stasis it may not matter. To me, being able to easily manipulate biology is so much more dangerous than nuclear proliferation. Anyways, not an expert of any of these fields.

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

#164

Post by cestith »

somenameforme wrote: post #142
jstanley wrote: post #111

Earlier 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…

We’d fit, but it sounds uncomfortable.

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

#165

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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.

How many years of inflation til that's realistic?

10,000?

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

#166

Post by yieldcrv »

uxp100 wrote: post #155
monster_truck wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the plot of countless animes. New magical dude becomes ruler of the city state, constructs 5 new buildings that end up drawing a citywide transmutation circle to harvest all of the souls/etc

I actually can’t think of anything I’ve watched with that has exactly that plot, but I suspect the progenitor of that sort of Geomancy in anime is the novel series Teito Monogatari. (One or two adaptations were released in English under the name Doomed Megalopolis). Just a tidbit.

Recurring theme in Full Metal Alchemist / Brotherhood

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

#167

Post by kevinmchugh »

tialaramex wrote: post #151
xanderlewis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised atoms are so big, I would have guessed much smaller. Me too. Perhaps what we should realise is not how big atoms are, but how small we are. I wonder if life can be sustained at larger scales. Could we have galaxy-sized lifeforms that make us look like bacteria?

The relationship between time and distance is presumed to be a system constant, which we named c. So, a galaxy-sized lifeform would take a very long time to experience stuff. It takes a tiny but measurable amount of time to go from your brain choosing "Press button" to your muscles all that distance away firing to cause the button press, and then for the button press to have effect - at galaxy scale these periods wou…

It'd have to be much more distributed in its ability to react, like octopuses arms being semi autonomous. They'll continue to pass objects towards the body even after being severed.

Or consider the humongous fungus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armillaria_ostoyae

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

#169

Post by cestith »

chrisweekly wrote: post #119
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.

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."

A tenth of a percent is often a rounding error. So the difference between a million and a billion truly is about a billion.

When the above isn’t enough to light a bulb, I like introduce that as analogous to pennies.

1 penny is $0.01 10 pennies is $0.1 100 pennies is $1 1,000 pennies is $10 10,000 pennies is $100 100,000 pennies is $1,000 1,000,000 pennies is $10,000 10,000,000 pennies is $100,000 100,000,000 pennies is $1,000,000 1,000,000,000 pennies is $10,000,000

Most people understand that ten million dollars is not just a different amount but a distinct kind of amount from ten thousand dollars. The powers of ten seem to become clearer with a smaller starting amount. Once they grasp the above, point out that the relationship is the same if everything starts 100 times as large.

There’s also a great one out there comparing 1,000 to 1 million to 1 billion seconds, converted to years plus days.

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

#170

Post by thisisnewnew »

tialaramex wrote: post #151
xanderlewis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised atoms are so big, I would have guessed much smaller. Me too. Perhaps what we should realise is not how big atoms are, but how small we are. I wonder if life can be sustained at larger scales. Could we have galaxy-sized lifeforms that make us look like bacteria?

The relationship between time and distance is presumed to be a system constant, which we named c. So, a galaxy-sized lifeform would take a very long time to experience stuff. It takes a tiny but measurable amount of time to go from your brain choosing "Press button" to your muscles all that distance away firing to cause the button press, and then for the button press to have effect - at galaxy scale these periods wou…

think it's relative upward and downward in scale. an entity at universe scale might be moving similar speed to us in our 3d space
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