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News18
12-05-2025
- Science
- News18
Scientists Have Created Gold From Lead In The CERN Large Hadron Collider
Last Updated: In the LHC, the world's largest collider, scientists accelerated lead nuclei to 99.999993% the speed of light, sending them hurtling through vacuum-sealed tunnels In a scene that feels torn from the pages of medieval alchemy, the world's most advanced physics laboratory has managed to achieve what mystics once only dreamed of – transforming one element into another, specifically, lead into gold. But this modern-day transmutation was not the result of ancient spells or bubbling cauldrons. It happened inside the 27-kilometre ring of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, on the outskirts of Geneva, during a series of high-energy experiments conducted between 2015 and 2018. According to a recently published paper in Physical Review C, scientists during this period succeeded in producing an estimated 86 billion gold nuclei, albeit for a fleeting instant. That's roughly 29 picograms of gold – a trillionth of a gram – far too small to mint a coin or even to see, but a dazzling scientific feat nonetheless. The process reads like a sci-fi interpretation of the periodic table. Lead and gold are neighbours on the elemental chart, with gold containing 79 protons and lead 82. Theoretically, by knocking a few protons and neutrons off a lead atom, you could arrive at gold. However, this transformation requires titanic forces that no ancient alchemist could dream of. Enter the LHC, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. There, scientists accelerated lead nuclei to 99.999993% the speed of light, sending them hurtling through vacuum-sealed tunnels. When two such nuclei passed close to one another, their immense electromagnetic fields clashed, generating an intense burst of photons. These photon pulses were powerful enough to destabilise the nuclei, ejecting protons and neutrons in a process known as photodisintegration. In this atomic mayhem, some of the remaining particles briefly reassembled into gold nuclei – exquisitely short-lived and impossibly rare. Most were destroyed within moments as they collided with the LHC's walls, but their formation was detected thanks to the highly sensitive Zero Degree Calorimeters (ZDC) in the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) detector. The ZDC measured the emission of nuclear fragments and converted this invisible alchemy into quantifiable data. And gold wasn't the only element born in the chaos. The collisions also produced mercury (80 protons) and thallium (81 protons) – elements just shy of lead on the periodic table. While these were more abundant than gold in the LHC experiments, it is gold's symbolic and scientific significance that captured imaginations. This achievement may not herald a new age of gold mining in laboratories – the amount created is cosmically small and extraordinarily expensive. But it provides valuable insights into the nuclear processes that occur in extreme environments, such as supernovae or neutron star collisions, where nature might perform similar transmutations on a far grander scale. Watch India Pakistan Breaking News on CNN-News18. Get breaking news, in-depth analysis, and expert perspectives on everything from geopolitics to diplomacy and global trends. Stay informed with the latest world news only on News18. Download the News18 App to stay updated! First Published:
Newsweek
09-05-2025
- Science
- Newsweek
Alchemist's Dream Realized As Lead Turned Into Gold at Large Hadron Collider
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Fulfilling the dream of medieval alchemists, physicists have observed the transmutation of lead into gold—through nuclear physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator. For centuries, this idea of turning lead into gold—chrysopoeia—seemed out of reach. The two metals share a similar density, but modern science later proved they are distinct elements and chemically non-interchangeable. However, gold can be produced, albeit in microscopic amounts, at the heart of ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), one of the four main instruments on the LHC at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The ALICE experiment is dedicated to heavy-ion physics and investigates matter under extreme energy densities. During high-energy collisions of lead nuclei at the LHC, scientists can momentarily recreate quark–gluon plasma, a state of matter that existed just millionths of a second after the Big Bang. Still, gold is not born from these direct crashes. Instead, it forms in a more subtle scenario—when lead nuclei almost collide head-on, but miss. "It is impressive to see that our detectors can handle head-on collisions producing thousands of particles, while also being sensitive to collisions where only a few particles are produced at a time, enabling the study of electromagnetic 'nuclear transmutation' processes," ALICE spokesperson Marco Van Leeuwen, said in a statement. An image of the tunnel inside a large hadron collider. An image of the tunnel inside a large hadron collider. Getty Images In near-miss encounters, intense electromagnetic fields surrounding the rapidly moving lead nuclei generate brief pulses of photons. T When these photons interact with nuclei, they cause a phenomenon known as electromagnetic dissociation, in which protons and neutrons are ejected from a nucleus. In rare cases, three protons are knocked out of a lead nucleus, leaving behind gold in its place. The ALICE team used specialized instruments known as Zero Degree Calorimeters (ZDC) to measure these rare events. By detecting the number of protons and neutrons ejected in collisions, researchers were able to distinguish between the creation of other heavy elements like thallium and mercury—and gold. Sadly, the resulting gold nuclei do not stick around for long. Traveling at nearly the speed of light, they smash into the walls of the collider or its components and disintegrate almost instantly into smaller particles. Still, the numbers are impressive: during Run 2 of the LHC (2015–2018), about 86 billion gold nuclei were produced. Run 3 has already nearly doubled that count. Yet despite this, the total mass of gold created is vanishingly small—trillions of times less than what would be needed to make, say, a wedding ring. While that may dash the hopes of some, the experiment opens a new window into how elements are formed and how electromagnetic fields can manipulate atomic nuclei. It also highlights the extraordinary sensitivity of the ALICE detector, which was designed not for gold-making, but to probe the universe's earliest moments. Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about particle physics? Let us know via science@ Reference ALICE Collaboration, Acharya, S., Agarwal, A., Aglieri Rinella, G., Aglietta, L., Agnello, M., Agrawal, N., Ahammed, Z., Ahmad, S., Ahn, S. U., Ahuja, I., Akindinov, A., Akishina, V., Al-Turany, M., Aleksandrov, D., Alessandro, B., Alfanda, H. M., Alfaro Molina, R., Ali, B., ... Zurlo, N. (2025). Proton emission in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at $sqrt{{s}_{NN}}=5.02$ TeV. Physical Review C, 111(5).
