Modern-day alchemy! Scientists turn lead into gold at the Large Hadron Collider

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For centuries, alchemists dreamed of turning lead into gold — not through magic, but by unlocking the hidden potential within metals themselves. While their methods never panned out, those of modern science finally have.

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator — have observed a real-life transmutation of lead into gold. But this transformation didn't come from direct collisions, as was previously observed. Instead, it emerged through a new mechanism involving near-miss interactions between atomic nuclei.

The LHC was built to accelerate particles to near the speed of light. The collisions of these particles allow scientists to study the fundamental building blocks of matter and explore how our universe is structured on its smallest scales.

While vital information has been gleaned from such head-on collisions, most encounters inside the collider are indirect. In these "near misses," particles pass close to one another without making contact yet generate electromagnetic fields so intense that they can trigger unexpected nuclear reactions.

The electromagnetic field emanating from a lead nucleus is particularly strong because the nucleus contains 82 protons, each carrying one elementary charge," officials with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (known by its French acronym, CERN) wrote in a statement.

"Moreover, the very high speed at which lead nuclei travel in the LHC (corresponding to 99.999993% of the speed of light) causes the electromagnetic field lines to be squashed into a thin pancake, transverse to the direction of motion, producing a short-lived pulse of photons," they added.

This pulse can trigger a process known as electromagnetic dissociation, in which a photon interacts with a nucleus, inducing internal oscillations that eject neutrons and photons. In the case of a passing lead atom, the loss of three protons through this process results in the formation of gold.

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