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Theoretically, yes, it is possible to transform another metal into another. However, this would be far from a lucrative business.
In search of prestige and wealth, people from medieval Europe have worked in vain to turn common gold metals. Nowadays, this process, known as CRISopÉis usually described only as an alchemical dream.
But is there any sciences that demonstrates that metals can even be transformed into gold? In fact, it exists. However, it would be far from profitable.
As it counts, when the concept resurfaced in medieval Europe, it was with a purely practical goal – converting a cheap metal to gold It was a safe way to wealth.
However, the appearance of modern science during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gradually discredited these ideas and Alchemy was abandoned in favor of the new disciplines of chemistry and physics.
But nuclear scientists have forever kept the secrets of this legendary transformation. Today we know that the identity of an element is determined by the number of protons at its core. The very coveted gold atoms contain 79 protons, while lead has 82.
“The nucleus is kept joined by strong force and it is very difficult to remove a proton or a neutrão,” he told Live Science, Alexander Kalweita physicist who works at the large Hadron collier at CERN, Switzerland.
However, the reorganization of these fundamental components of an atom means that, theoretically, it is possible to convert an element in another.
“If we have enough energy, we can effectively perform these operations. When three protons from the lead core are removed, a golden core is created,” said Kalweit.
This transformations have already been made
The first successful transmutation of another gold metal was made in 1941, when Harvard scientists They used a particle accelerator to fire lithium and deuterium nuclei in mercury atoms, which contains one more proton than gold.
High -energy particles ripped protons and neutrons from the mercury nuclei, creating three short -term gold radioactori isotopes, which quickly declined because the high energy nuclei were unstable.
Forty years later, this extraordinary feat was repeated by the Nobel Prize winner of Chemistry, Glenn Seaborgat Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
Its team investigated the fragmentation of Bismuto nuclei into relativist collisions (at light speed) and converted several thousand atoms of the gold element, bombarding the sample with carbon nuclei and neon in a particle accelerator.
Currently, research teams in particle accelerators around the world continue to report gold production as a byproduct of your experiences.
No Large Hadron Colliderfor example, Kalweit’s team is investigating lead ion collisions at speeds near the speed of light.
However, it is unlikely that currently nuclear physicists will ever be able to make profits synthesizing gold on a particle accelerator.
Far from being a lucrative business
The construction and operation expenses of an installation such as Large Hadron Collider are astronomical when compared to the value of the volume of gold produced.
Seaborg’s experiences in the 1980s are estimated to cost about a Triilian of times the price of gold they produced.
In addition, the rarity of interesting interactions means that researchers have to go through thousands of millions of data points to identify transformed atoms.
“Since the 1940s, many experiences have produced gold. But what is common to all of them is that None is even remotely close to being profitable”, Disse Kalweit.
