“86 billion gold nuclei from lead, this was created during the second period of operating LHC, the particle accelerator […] Between 2015 and 2018 “about the” Grand Collisionr de Hadrons “du CERN, on the Franco-Swiss border, announces the Dauphiné liberated This Thursday.
“What to finance the 91 -kilometer accelerator project? Not really, ”concludes the daily life of the Alps.
An alchemist’s dream (almost) realized
In practice, lead has been briefly changed into gold … which requires some explanations. The article at the origin of this information was published this Thursday in the very serious Physical Reviews Journalunder the title “Proton emission in UlTrapheuric collisions PB-PB to Mad = 5.02tev”. Abstruse? A little…
The alchemists have been dreaming since the dawn of time to change lead, whose world reserves are several hundred million tonnes, in gold: it is estimated that the planet is home to less than 250,000 tonnes of “accessible” gold, 80 % of which have already been extracted. Concretely, all the gold in the world can enter a 20 -meter side cube …
A very ephemeral process
So the scientists of the “great collision of Hadrons” (LHC) of the CERN, in Geneva, have pierced the secret of the philosopher’s stone to “make” it? Not really. But nuclear physics allowed them to briefly modify the structure of atoms, changing very ephemeral gold in gold.
A lead atom usually has 82 protons and 126 neutrons. One gold atom, him, three less protons: 79, for the same number of 126 neutrons. In theory, it is therefore “enough” to “remove” three protons from a lead atom to transform it into gold. Let’s say it clear: even technically possible, this action will cost more … than buying gold.
Gold has never been created on earth
Our planet has never “produced” gold: this element comes from the fall of asteroids on earth several billion years ago, after collisions of neutron stars, extremely powerful. Hence its rarity …
Under the border with Switzerland, at the LHC, stretches a 27 km circumference ring. An accelerator of particles, in which it is possible to make them hit them at a speed close to that of light. Almost science fiction, but the tool has already enabled major scientific discoveries.
Between 2015 and 2018, researchers thus propelled lead atom nuclei (nucleons) against each other. Not in order to “create gold”, explains to Parisian John Jowett, physicist. But to “create droplets of primordial material” thanks to the “massive nucleus” of lead atoms. Primordial material, as it existed immediately after the Big Bang, of a temperature 200,000 times higher than that of the heart of the sun – in the 3,000 billion degrees. Hot.
“We knew we could create gold”
“We knew that at this occasion, we could perhaps create gold,” continues the scientist. And that’s what we recently been able to measure. And not just a little: 86 billion nuclei of gold atoms have been “manufactured” in three years.
But … – because there is a “but” – not enough to get rich: first, despite their very large number, these atomic nuclei weigh almost nothing. In total, a picogram. So a millionth of a millionth gram. The slightest gold jewel has half a gram of the precious metal.
An experience rich in lessons
Then, these “created” gold particles have no stability: they only existed a tiny fraction of a second, before turning into other elements.
The fact remains that the experience – which was not intended to create gold – has proven to be positive: this “electromagnetic dissociation” caused by this very high speed circulation should allow CERN scientists to better understand nuclear physics, the formation of matter – until the creation of the universe.
