CERN's lead-to-gold conversion is the 'dream of medieval alchemists'

GENEVA (AN) — The ALICE collaboration at the world's largest particle physics lab has now measured the transmutation of lead into gold.

ALICE, which stands for "A Large Ion Collider Experiment," is a detector dedicated to heavy-ion physics at the Large Hadron Collider. It studies the physics of strongly interacting matter at extreme energy densities.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, announced on Thursday that lead ions smashed together broke the atoms into more recognizable forms such as the conversion of lead to gold.

"It is impressive to see that our detectors can handle head-on collisions producing thousands of particles, while also being sensitive to collisions where only a few particles are produced at a time, enabling the study of rare electromagnetic ‘nuclear transmutation’ processes," said ALICE spokesperson Marco Van Leeuwen.

The ALICE collaboration reported measurements that quantify the transmutation of lead into gold in CERN's LHC in a paper published in Physical Review Journals.

CERN notes that transforming the base metal lead into a precious metal gold – a process known as chrysopoeia – was a dream of medieval alchemists. The two metals have a similar density but are distinct chemical elements.

Gold has been artificially produced before using a bombardment of neutrons or protons, but the ALICE collaboration measured the transmutation of lead into gold by a new mechanism involving near-miss collisions between lead nuclei, CERN said.

The process of nuclear transmutation is not alchemy transmutation of lead into gold. Lead is made of 82 protons and has around 126 neutrons at its core. Gold has 79 protons, so the transmutation depends on the removal of three protons from each lead atom.