ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

Post by jonny_eh » Fri, May 09, 2025, 8:22 PM UTC

mattheww wrote: post #147

Did 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,…

Post by to11mtm » Fri, May 09, 2025, 8:24 PM UTC

yibg wrote: post #207

HappySweeney wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stable isotope of gold is produced by the collision of two neutron stars, which is unlikely to happen in our stellar vicinity any time soon.

Can't the s process produce gold too? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-process

Post by koolba » Fri, May 09, 2025, 8:29 PM UTC

Vox_Leone wrote: post #123

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.

>but transmutation of lead to gold - the dream of many alchemists - is now just a by product of particle accelerators. The ultimate philosopher's stone.

Post by notfed » Fri, May 09, 2025, 8:33 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #103

1970-01-01 wrote: post #7

29 picograms. Just need to scale it by 1000000000000x to get a money printer.

It’s not even 29 picograms. It’s zero: > Gold nuclei emerge from the collision with very high energy and hit the LHC beam pipe or collimators at various points downstream, where they immediately fragment into single protons, neutrons and other particles. The gold exists for just a tiny fraction of a second.

Post by oblio » Fri, May 09, 2025, 8:35 PM UTC

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…