{"id":108978,"date":"2025-05-17T12:12:06","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T12:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/108978\/"},"modified":"2025-05-17T12:12:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T12:12:06","slug":"see-how-scientists-turned-lead-to-gold-if-only-for-a-microsecond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/108978\/","title":{"rendered":"See how scientists turned lead to gold \u2013 if only for a microsecond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Medieval alchemists toiled unsuccessfully to change lead into gold, but physicists at the Large Hadron Collider<\/a> in Switzerland had better luck \u2013 though for only a microsecond.<\/p>\n

Alchemists<\/a> used lead in their transmutation<\/a> attempts since it was easy to find and because its physical properties are similar to those of gold. That includes atomic mass<\/a>: lead has 82 protons<\/a> in the nuclei of its atoms, while gold has 79<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead of alchemy, scientists used the world\u2019s largest particle accelerator<\/a> to crash beams of lead ions into each other at near-light speed. Some of the ions collided; others didn’t.<\/p>\n

Can’t see our graphics? Click here to view them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the near-collisions, some lead atoms lost three of their protons, turning them into gold atoms<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But they lasted only an instant. Researchers estimate the collider created 86 billion gold nuclei<\/a> \u2012 about 29 trillionths of a gram, in four major experiments between 2015 and 2018, according to Nature<\/a>. Most of them lasted for about one microsecond before breaking apart<\/a>.<\/p>\n

CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, reported the results<\/a> on May 8.<\/p>\n

How does the collider make it happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the collider, lead ions are fired at each other at nearly the speed of light, either hitting one another or passing close to others. Ions<\/a> are atoms with positive or negative electrical charges.<\/p>\n

A lead nucleus emits an intense electromagnetic field<\/a>. In near-misses, a reaction known as electromagnetic dissociation<\/a> can occur. The lead atom’s nucleus vibrates and ejects three of its protons, in effect turning into a gold atom.<\/p>\n

However, these \u201cunstable, fast-moving gold atoms would have existed for around one microsecond before smashing into experimental apparatus or breaking apart into other particles,\u201d Nature says.<\/p>\n

What is the Large Hadron Collider?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful particle accelerator<\/a> ever built, according to according to CERN, the organization that operates the collider.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a ring of superconducting magnets<\/a> and machines in a tunnel nearly 17 miles in circumference. It\u2019s located about 575 feet below ground northwest of Geneva. It took 10 years to build and was completed in 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of its most significant discoveries was the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson<\/a>, a fundamental particle<\/a> that explained how elementary particles have mass.<\/p>\n

It collides high-speed beams<\/a> of protons and ions and allows researchers to observe the results. The purpose of these collisions is to recreate matter that\u2019s believed to have filled the universe and about a millionth of a second after the Big Bang<\/a>, CERN says.<\/p>\n

SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Reuters; CERN; nature.com; space.com; NASA; Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Medieval alchemists toiled unsuccessfully to change lead into gold, but physicists at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3845],"tags":[3907,35440,29325,7023,327,49665,2396,7560,38716,3981,5488,5179,5496,74,699,70,2600,38712,16,15,11758,49666],"class_list":{"0":"post-108978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-article-plus","10":"tag-chemistry","11":"tag-geneva","12":"tag-gold","13":"tag-gold-metal","14":"tag-graphics","15":"tag-image","16":"tag-image-topper","17":"tag-metal","18":"tag-neutral","19":"tag-overall","20":"tag-overall-neutral","21":"tag-physics","22":"tag-plus","23":"tag-science","24":"tag-switzerland","25":"tag-topper","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-united-kingdom","28":"tag-usat","29":"tag-usat-graphics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114523114219976848","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}