Modern Alchemy: From Lead to Gold

May 9, 2025

In a ground-breaking study, CERN’s ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) has transformed lead into gold, although for only a quick moment and in vanishingly small quantities. Using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the ALICE experiment observed that when lead nuclei pass extremely close to each other at nearly the speed of light, their powerful electromagnetic fields can knock out three protons from a lead atom, converting it into a gold atom. This process, known as electromagnetic dissociation, relies on nuclear, not chemical reactions and was detected with ALICE’s highly sensitive zero degree calorimeters. During LHC’s Run 2 (2015–2018), about 86 billion gold nuclei were produced, but these existed for just a microsecond before breaking apart, amounting to only 29 picograms, so you can’t even make a speck of jewelry. While this experiment doesn’t fulfill the alchemists’ hopes for riches, it provides valuable insights into rare nuclear transmutation processes and helps refine models for particle accelerator performance, marking a fascinating intersection of history and cutting-edge physics!