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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

#12
So it turns out the Philosopher's Stone is real, it just involves a 10,000-ton detection apparatus, a 17-mile-diameter accelerator tube as a source of prima, and a quark-gluon plasma.

Alchemists just had a skill issue.

(ETA: technically, so do the physicists if one wanted to actually get gold out of these interactions; the gold nuclei are coming out of the interactions with highly-random trajectories and just spalling into the collector or the downstream pipe, where the nuclei fall apart under the wild energies of a nearlight-velocity interaction. Can't use the gold if you can't slow it down to human-hands speed. Of course, at the energies and quantities we're talking about, it'd be cheaper to go into the asteroid belt, find a gold-heavy one, tow it to Earth, and dump it in a convenient ocean if you really want a bunch of gold).

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

#13
post #6

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

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

#16

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 )

If you’re worried about your funding getting cut, transmuting lead into gold is one way to get around that.

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

#19

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 :)

So they were just waiting for the price of gold to reach a value that made lead=>gold justifiable? I'm expecting a Discovery TV show about the new Gold Rush. Maybe Parker will go all in?
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