Can other metals be turned into gold?
In the pursuit of prestige and wealth, people rich through medieval Europe worked in vain to transmute daily metals gold. Today, this process, known as Chrysopéie, is mainly rejected as an alchemical dream. But is there a science to show that metals can be transformed into gold?
In fact, there is – but it would be far from being a profitable business, according to evidence.
The idea of transmuting gold metals dates back to ancient Greece and the Panopolis philosophers. He thought that the transformation of lower metals into gold reflects the purification and redemption of the soul and the work had a deep spiritual meaning. When the concept reappeared in medieval Europe, it was with a purely practical orientation – the conversion of a cheap metal into gold was a safe path to wealth.
“Natural philosophers had this idea of ripening,” Umberto VeronesiAn archaeologist and heritage scientist at Nova Lisbon University in Portugal, told Live Science. “The basic metals were considered unclean stages and would finally mature the purest form of all, which was gold. The only problem was that it would take a long time for this to happen on earth.”
Alchemists thought that if they could only create the philosopher stone – a mythical substance – they would be able to catalyze this maturation process. It was thought that metals contained a mixture of fundamental ingredients: Mercury, sulfur and salt. Consequently, by reorganizing these components and drawing all impurities, all metals would ultimately turn into gold, they supposed.
“Chrysopéia was generally consistent with the theories of matter And the theories of transformation at the time, “said Veronesi.” No one really doubted it could be done. “”
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The emergence of modern science During the 17th and 18th centuries, discredited these ideas, and alchemy was abandoned in favor of the new disciplines of chemistry And physical. However, incredibly, nuclear scientists kept the secrets to this legendary transformation for almost a century.
Today, we know that the identity of an element is determined by the number of protons in its nucleus. Very coveted atoms contain 79 protons, while lead is 82.
“The nucleus is maintained together by the strong forceAnd it is very difficult to remove a proton or a neutron, “said Alexander KalweitA physicist working at the great collision of Hadrons in CERN in Switzerland.
However, reorganizing these fundamental components of an atom means that it is theoretically possible to convert one element to another. “If you have enough energy, you can actually carry out such operations,” said Kalweit. “When you remove three protons from the lead nucleus, you have created a gold nucleus.”
The first successful transmutation of another gold metal was reported in 1941, when Harvard scientists used an accelerator of particles to dismiss lithium and deuterium nuclei in mercury atoms, which contains a proton more than gold. High -energy particles have removed the protons and neutrons from mercury nuclei, creating three short -lasting radioactive isotopes, which quickly broken down because high energy nuclei were unstable.
Forty years later, This extraordinary achievement was repeated by Nobel Prize in chemistry The winner Glenn Seorg at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. His team was investigating the fragmentation of Bismuth’s nuclei in relativist (speed of light) Collisions and converted several thousand atoms of the gold element by bombing the sample with carbon and neon nuclei in a particle accelerator.
Today, the Accelerators party research teams around the world continue to report gold production as a by-product of their experiences. At Large collision of HadronsThe Kalweit team investigates the collisions of lead ions near the speed of light.
“In frontal collisions, we essentially release the quarks which are inside protons and neutrons, and they form, for a short period, a state of matter which existed some microseconds after the Big Bang In the early universe, “he explained.” It is the so-called plasma of a quarter gluon. “”
These frontal collisions are so intense that protons and neutrons are completely destroyed. But the interactions close to the lower energy – where the particles are extremely close but do not affect – generate a powerful electromagnetic field which eliminates the protons of lead nuclei. The result: the team detected about 29 gram-of-gold During an experimental race for three years.
However, despite having reached the dream of the alchemist, it is unlikely that nuclear physicists will never make a profit by synthesizing gold in an accelerator of particles. The expenses of construction and management of an installation such as the large collision of Hadrons are astronomical compared to the value of the volume of gold produced; It is estimated that the experiences of Seorg in the 1980s cost approximately a Billion of times the price of the gold they produced. In addition, the scarcity of interesting interactions means that researchers must travel billions of data points to even identify the processed atoms.
“Since the 1940s, there have been many experiences that have produced gold,” said Kalweit. “But what is common to everyone is that none of them is even from a distance to be profitable.”
