LHC experiences do not create large gold nuggets-but some particles within a lead-ion beam can turn into gold for about a microsecond.
Lead beams in collision originate gold and short -term moving gold ions. Understanding the process can help refine experiences with particle accelerators.
The dream of the 17th century alchemists was realized by physicists in the Great Hadrões collier (LHC), which transformed lead into gold “Although just for a fraction of a second and at a huge cost.”
A (little mysterious) transmutation It happened at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, near Geneva, Switzerland.
The first chemicals – at the time, alchemists They dreamed of turning the abundant lead into precious gold. But the Differences in the number of protons between the elements (82 for lead and 79 for gold) made it impossible by chemical means.
In a new study, a team of experience researchers Alice do CERN got this feat directing lead beams against each othertraveling at a speed close to that of light. Under these conditions, ions occasionally grazing each other, instead of colliding frontally.
When this happens, the intense electromagnetic field around a ião can create an energy pulse that triggers the ejection of three protons of a approaching lead core – transforming it into gold.
In an analysis of the study results, presented in an article on May 7 in the Physical Review Journalsthe team calculated that between 2015 and 2018, the collisions in the LHC created 86 billion golden centers – approximately 29 grass billiones.
Most of the unstable and fast -moving gold atoms would have lasted about 1 microsecond before colliding with experimental appliances or fragment in other particles.
Whenever lead bundles collidein the LHC, it is produced, but Alice is the only experience with the detector configured to identify this process.
The analysis “is the first to systematically detect and analyze the signing of gold production in LHC experimentally”, says Russian physics Uliana Dmitrievamember of the collaboration Alice.
“Between 2002 and 2004, another CERN accelerator, called SPS, observed the transformation of lead into gold,” he says Jiangyong Jiaphysicist at the University of Stony Brook in New York.
But the experiences conducted in the new study are carried out with higher energy, have a much greater probability of creating goldand allow much clearer observations, Jia adds.
CERN researchers do not properly plan to dedicate themselves to gold production as a secondary activity-an activity that would be ruinous-but they claim that a better understanding of how photons can change nuclei will help Improve LHC performance.
“Understanding such processes is crucial for controlling the quality and stability of the beam,” says Jiangyong Jia.
