Physicists turn lead into gold — for a fraction of a second

undefined 13, 2025

Source: nature

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have achieved the alchemist's dream: turning lead into gold, albeit briefly and at great cost. By smashing lead ions together at near-light speed, the intense electromagnetic field causes a lead nucleus to eject protons, transforming it into gold. Between 2015 and 2018, these collisions produced 86 billion gold nuclei, weighing just 29 trillionths of a gram, but they only lasted for about a microsecond before decaying.

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