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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

#221

Post by anigbrowl »

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.

Considering that this was an unlooked-for byproduct, I'm sure those numbers could go way up if they opted to pursue this as a primary goal.

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

#223

Post by Legend2440 »

cookingmyserver wrote: post #161

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…

> 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.

Strong disagree. We have only scratched the surface of material science and chemistry; we are typically working with the bulk properties of relativity simple materials.

There’s a very wide design space of metamaterials and molecular machines that we have not explored.

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

#224

Post by fsckboy »

shiandow wrote: post #157
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…

Atoms are large enough to have noticeable Brownian motion visible with an optical microscope. They're small but not impossibly so.

mmmm, not exactly. you cannot see atomic brownian motion with an optical microscope, what you can see is visible brownian motion of otherwise visible particles caused by their collisions with molecules/atoms. this says as much about the momentum/energy of the collisions as it does about the mass (which bears some relationship to the size which bears direct relation to optical visibility)

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

#225

Post by HenryBemis »

dachris wrote: post #197
jaggederest wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, except for in particle accelerators, stars, and supernovae, atoms are never created or destroyed, so if they're creating gold, it's here for good.

Except that everyone with a fusor can feed the gold atom a neutron which converts it to unstable Au-198 that decays to mercury. Fun times when you can (theoretically) transmute gold to mercury with stuff you can order on the internet.

I definitely will mis-speak/mis-write, but my mathematic (also flawed) tells me that if Gold + 1 = Mercury, then Something + 1 = Gold, so we can find that "something" add 1 of the thingie, and booya!! gold!! (right?) (please read the above with silly humor)

In a slightly more serious note, I remember listening to Elon in some podcast 1-2 years ago saying how they create new metals/alloys that nobody had created previously, because they needed specific needs covered, and no known material had the attributes they needed. So.. in a way..

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

#226

Post by mrguyorama »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #64
nolok wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CERN's budget has not really had a budget cut or a need to justify its budget. Nor does it have extra money flowing, mind you. It's also really cheap for member states all things considered, I think as a french citizen I "pay" 5 euros per year or something like that for CERN ?

I’m just being glib. As an American I admire the EU’s commitment towards funding scientific endeavors. I still lament that our government abandoned the Superconducting Supercollider in the early 90’s to save money… right around the time our economy was about to boom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider

The SSC was an utterly failed project, and would have had difficulty finding the things that the LHC has found, partially because it had really bad Luminosity of the beam.

The program was famously badly run, with talented physicists utterly refusing to work with the administrators to keep a ballooning budget under control, and was an example of utterly failed project management. It used a magnet design that had numerous problems, including really severe project management oversights, like deciding to update the magnet design, and accidentally forgetting to update a significant portion of the magnets.

Killing the SSC was the correct call. It was going to cost over $12 billion just to build. The LHC eventually cost about $5 billion, and had much more success in the world of project management.

It's a lot easier to get science funding when you can demonstrate that you can manage a several billion dollar project, and don't fuck up basic things like accounting.

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

#227

Post by marcosdumay »

dachris wrote: post #197
jaggederest wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, except for in particle accelerators, stars, and supernovae, atoms are never created or destroyed, so if they're creating gold, it's here for good.

Except that everyone with a fusor can feed the gold atom a neutron which converts it to unstable Au-198 that decays to mercury. Fun times when you can (theoretically) transmute gold to mercury with stuff you can order on the internet.

You could do that for decades already!

It just doesn't make a lot of economic sense, but I wonder why nobody made fusion art yet.

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

#228

Post by BrandoElFollito »

I have already mentioned that, but such a grandiose waste of money is terrible.

We pour billions in these accelerators without any hope of using the findings. At the same time other branches of science (even physics) are scrapping some money around.

CERN is a fabulous place (I did my PhD there so yes, shitting my old bed), but this is the fabulous of a First Class or private jet flight around the world without any consideration for others.

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

#229

Post by nandomrumber »

greenavocado wrote: post #204
serf wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as I have thought with the other numerous "boiled earth" comparisons i've read in the past few weeks : who cares? In what case is this a useful way to describe something to anyone? since when does a laymen comprehend the size of the earth in any meaningful way? aside : it's funny how many wordy multi-step unit conversion comparisons have flooded the discussion space post-LLM... I'm sure that's unrelated.

I find multiples of the amount of energy needed to vaporize our oceans a useful unit of energy because 8.5 x 10^27 joules is too abstract. It's just like 1 AU being the average Sun-Earth distance. It is easier to comprehend than 149,597,870,700 m when talking about large distances. Many discussions recently have centered around processes which require tremendous amounts of energy and the vaporized oceans unit provide…

And remember, 1 AU is about 997.3 billion bananas laid end to end.

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

#230

Post by rurban »

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.

You forgot that those smaller nuclei only existed for microseconds. It doesnt scale at all, just tricks.
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