Physicists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider achieved the long-sought alchemical dream of transmuting lead into gold by colliding lead ions at nearly light speed. This astonishing process, although fleeting and yielding negligible quantities of gold, showcased the principles of physics in action. Between 2015 and 2018, they observed 86 billion gold atoms forming from lead nuclei, which lasted only briefly in existence. These results underline the extraordinary potential of particle physics and its ability to challenge traditional understanding, although commercially speaking, the resulting gold was virtually worthless.
The dream of every medieval alchemist - turning lead into gold - has finally come true thanks to some impractical physics at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
In rare moments of subatomic magic, a lead nucleus gets so rattled it ejects three protons, spontaneously reinventing itself as gold.
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