Physicists Turned Lead Into Gold—for a Fraction of a Second
Hundreds of years ago, alchemists dreamed of chrysopoeia: turning lead into gold. Scientists at the research institute CERN have achieved this medieval fantasy—if only for a fraction of a second.
Physicists used the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), to eject three protons from lead atoms—effectively transforming them into gold atoms. Though this isn't the first time scientists have created artificial gold, the researchers used a new mechanism involving near-miss collisions.
'The present analysis is the first to systematically detect and analyse the signature of gold production at the LHC experimentally,' Uliana Dmitrieva, a physicist from the ALICE collaboration at CERN, said in an institute statement. ALICE stands for A Large Ion Collider Experiment, and is one of a number of experiments at CERN's LHC. Dmitrieva did not participate in the study detailing the new mechanism, published Wednesday in the Physical Review Journals.
Elements are defined by the number of protons in the nuclei of their atoms. Lead nuclei, for example, have 82 protons each, while gold nuclei have 79. The recent study saw lead nuclei zoom through the Large Hadron Collider at the mind-boggling rate of 99.999993% of the speed of light. The nuclei's electromagnetic fields warped, creating a brief flash of light particles called photons. It was the interaction between these photons and the lead nuclei—not collisions, which give the collider its name, but near-misses—that caused the nuclei to shed some protons and neutrons in a process called electromagnetic dissociation.
If the lead atoms lost zero protons, they remained lead. If they lost one, they turned into thallium; if they lost two, they turned into mercury; and if they lost three, they turned into gold. The near-miss collisions successfully produced all three heavy metals, though the gold nuclei almost immediately broke apart—meaning gold existed for less than a second.
While the latest experiment produced nearly twice as much gold as previous attempts, the fleeting quantity is still trillions of times less than what a goldsmith would need to make even a single piece of jewelry.
'The results also test and improve theoretical models of electromagnetic dissociation which, beyond their intrinsic physics interest, are used to understand and predict beam losses that are a major limit on the performance of the LHC and future colliders,' explained John Jowett, an accelerator physicist from the ALICE collaboration who did not participate in the study.
While medieval alchemists might be disappointed to learn that the study reveals no way to generate piles of riches, the research joins a host of other achievements accomplished with the LHC. Perhaps the most famous of those is the discovery of the Higgs boson particle in 2012, whose existence confirms the theoretical presence of a new field that gives mass to other particles, like electrons. It remains to be seen what new discovery the world's most powerful particle accelerator will reveal next.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Black holes could work as natural particle colliders to hunt for dark matter, scientists say
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. To unlock the secrets of dark matter, scientists could turn to supermassive black holes and their ability to act as natural superpowered particle colliders. That's according to new research that found conditions around black holes are more violent than previously believed. Currently, the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but since it was used to discover the Higgs Boson in 2012, it has failed to deliver evidence of physics beyond the so-called "standard model of particle physics," including the particles that comprise dark matter. That has led scientists to propose and plan even larger and more powerful particle colliders to explore this as-yet undiscovered country of physics. However, these particle accelerators are prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to build. Fortunately, the cosmos offers natural particle accelerators in the form of the extreme environments around supermassive black holes. We just need a little ingenuity to exploit them. "One of the great hopes for particle colliders like the LHC is that it will generate dark matter particles, but we haven't seen any evidence yet," Joseph Silk, study team member and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said in a statement. "That's why there are discussions underway to build a much more powerful version, a next-generation supercollider. But as we invest $30 billion and wait 40 years to build this supercollider, nature may provide a glimpse of the future in supermassive black holes." Dark matter is the mysterious stuff that seems to account for around 85% of all matter in the cosmos. That means the matter we understand — everything we see around us that's composed of atoms made of electrons, protons and neutrons — accounts for just 15% of stuff in the matter remains frustratingly elusive because it doesn't interact with light, making it effectively invisible. This is why we know it can't be made of standard atoms because these particles do interact with light. That has spurred the search for new particles that could comprise dark matter, with a great deal of this effort conducted using particle accelerators like the LHC. Human-made particle accelerators like the LHC allow scientists to probe the fundamental aspects of nature by slamming together particles like protons at near-light speeds. This creates flashes of energy and showers of short-lived particles. Within these showers, scientists hunt for hitherto undiscovered particles. Test particles like protons are accelerated and guided toward each other within the LHC and other "atom smashers" using incredibly strong magnets, but supermassive black holes could mimic this process using gravity and their own spins. Supermassive black holes with masses millions, or billions, of times that of the sun sitting at the hearts of galaxies are often surrounded by material in flattened clouds called "accretion disks." As these black holes spin at high speeds, some of this material is channeled to their poles, from where it is blasted out as near-light-speed jets of plasma. This phenomenon could generate effects similar to those seen in particle accelerators here on Earth. "If supermassive black holes can generate these particles by high-energy proton collisions, then we might get a signal on Earth, some really high-energy particle passing rapidly through our detectors," Silk said. "That would be the evidence for a novel particle collider within the most mysterious objects in the universe, attaining energies that would be unattainable in any terrestrial accelerator. "We'd see something with a strange signature that conceivably provides evidence for dark matter, which is a bit more of a leap, but it's possible.'The key to Silk and colleagues' recipe of supermassive black holes as supercolliders hinges on their discovery that gas flows near black holes can sap energy from the spin of that black hole. This results in the conditions in the gas becoming far more violent than expected. Thus, around spinning supermassive black holes, there should be a wealth of high-speed collisions between particles similar to those created in the LHC here on Earth."Some particles from these collisions go down the throat of the black hole and disappear forever," Silk said. "But because of their energy and momentum, some also come out, and it's those that come out which are accelerated to unprecedentedly high energies."It's very hard to say what the limit is, but they certainly are up to the energy of the newest supercollider that we plan to build, so they could definitely give us complementary results," Silk said. Related Stories: — Black hole announces itself to astronomers by violently ripping apart a star — Massive star's gory 'death by black hole' is the biggest and brightest event of its kind — Star escapes ravenous supermassive black hole, leaving behind its stellar partner Of course, catching these high-energy particles from supermassive supercolliders many light-years away will be tricky even if the team's theory is correct. Key to this detection could be observatories already tracking supernovas, black hole eruptions and other high-energy cosmic events."The difference between a supercollider and a black hole is that black holes are far away," Silk concluded. "But nevertheless, these particles will get to us." The team's research was published on Tuesday (June 3) in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Physicists propose using black holes as 'cheaper' particle colliders as budget cuts loom
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. In the face of eye-watering costs, long construction times and the Trump administration's slashing of federal science funding, physicists have proposed a cheaper alternative to the next-generation of particle supercolliders — peering into black holes. Scientists initially hoped that the elusive particles that make up dark matter would be spat out by high-energy proton collisions inside CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), yet so far no such detection has been made. Finding dark matter, therefore, could mean waiting decades until new, higher energy, supercolliders are built. Or perhaps not, according to one group of researchers. Publishing their findings June 3 in the journal Physical Review Letters, they suggest that the answers we're looking for could be in violent collisions inside the fast-moving accretion disks that surround enormous black holes. "One of the great hopes for particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider is that it will generate dark matter particles, but we haven't seen any evidence yet," study co-author Joseph Silk, an astrophysics professor at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Oxford, U.K. said in a statement. "That's why there are discussions underway to build a much more powerful version, a next-generation supercollider. But as we invest $30 billion and wait 40 years to build this supercollider — nature may provide a glimpse of the future in super massive black holes." Particle colliders work by smashing particles into each other at near-light-speeds, creating interactions from which the most fundamental elements of the universe briefly emerge as high-energy debris. It's from these collisions that the LHC discovered the Higg's Boson in 2012, the elusive particle that gives all others their mass. Related: World's largest atom smasher turned lead into gold — and then destroyed it in an instant But despite this discovery and many others (alongside key contributions to the development of the internet, computing and some cancer therapies) the LHC has yet to produce dark matter, possibly because it is incapable of reaching the energies required to produce its particles. One of the universe's most mysterious components, dark matter makes up roughly 27% of our cosmos's missing content. But it doesn't interact with light, so it has yet to be directly detected. This means that despite countless observations of the ways it shapes our universe, scientists are still unsure of where dark matter comes from, or even what it is. Seeking a new source of dark matter particles, the researchers behind the new study looked to black holes. Observations by space telescopes have revealed that rapidly spinning black holes can launch massive jets of plasma from the accretion disks of hot matter that surround them. And according to the researchers' calculations, these jets could be far more powerful than first thought — enabling particles to collide at similar energy levels as those projected for future supercolliders. "Some particles from these collisions go down the throat of the black hole and disappear forever," Silk said. "But because of their energy and momentum, some also come out, and it's those that come out which are accelerated to unprecedentedly high energies." Silk's team calculated that the energy produced by black hole jets could be "as powerful as you get from a supercollider, or more," adding that "it's very hard to say what the limit is." RELATED STORIES —'Beauty' particle discovered at world's largest atom smasher could unlock new physics —Black holes can destroy planets — but they can also lead us to thriving alien worlds. Here's how. —10 mind-blowing black hole discoveries from 2024 To detect the particles zipping from black hole collisions, the researchers propose tracking them with observatories designed to study supernovae, such as the South Pole's IceCube Neutrino Observatory or the Kilometer Cube Neutrino Telescope. "If supermassive black holes can generate these particles by high-energy proton collisions, then we might get a signal on Earth, some really high-energy particle passing rapidly through our detectors," Silk said. "That would be the evidence for a novel particle collider within the most mysterious objects in the universe, attaining energies that would be unattainable in any terrestrial accelerator. We'd see something with a strange signature that conceivably provides evidence for dark matter, which is a bit more of a leap but it's possible."
Gizmodo
2 days ago
- Gizmodo
Physicists Propose Cheaper Alternative to Particle Colliders: Supermassive Black Holes
A new study from Johns Hopkins University suggests that supermassive black holes—those cosmic behemoths lurking at the centers of galaxies—might already be generating the kinds of high-energy particle collisions researchers have spent decades trying to recreate here on Earth. Published today in Physical Review Letters, the study proposes that certain spinning black holes could serve as natural particle accelerators, rivaling or even exceeding the capabilities of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). That's a big deal, especially as funding for fundamental physics research grows increasingly scarce in the United States, and plans for next-generation colliders stretch far into the future. For about a decade, experts have theorized that supermassive black holes could do this, co-author Andrew Mummery, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford, told Gizmodo. But his study attempted to validate this theory by looking for naturally-occurring scenarios that would give rise to a black hole's supercollider-like behavior. Understanding how this happens could provide a new avenue for research on dark matter and other elusive particles. 'One of the great hopes for particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider is that it will generate dark matter particles, but we haven't seen any evidence yet,' explained co-author Joseph Silk, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Oxford, and the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, in a Johns Hopkins release. 'That's why there are discussions underway to build a much more powerful version, a next-generation supercollider,' Silk said. 'But as we invest $30 billion and wait 40 years to build this supercollider—nature may provide a glimpse of the future in super massive black holes.' At the LHC, protons are smashed together at near-light speeds to uncover the building blocks of reality—and hopefully, to catch a glimpse of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up about 85% of the universe's mass. But it turns out black holes might already be producing these elusive particles in the wild. Some supermassive black holes spin so rapidly that they can fling out jets of plasma at astonishing speeds. In their new study, Mummery and Silk modeled what happens near the edge of these spinning monsters, where violent gas flows can whip particles into chaotic collisions, much like a human-built collider does. 'Some particles from these collisions go down the throat of the hole and disappear forever,' Silk said, 'But because of their energy and momentum, some also come out, and it's those that come out which are accelerated to unprecedentedly high energies.' These ultra-energetic particles zipping through space could, in theory, be picked up by Earth-based observatories like IceCube in Antarctica or the KM3NeT telescope beneath the Mediterranean Sea, both of which already detect ghostly particles called neutrinos. Earlier this year, KM3NeT researchers announced the detection of the most energetic neutrino yet, a potential step forward in understanding the behavior of these ephemeral and energetic particles. Equipped with a deeper understanding of how these high-energy particles might form at the edges of supermassive black holes, Mummery now aims to investigate their nature. Figuring out what, exactly, escapes from these cosmic voids could offer a cost-effective, naturally occurring complement to traditional colliders. The approach could yield a new path toward uncovering the nature of dark matter.
