ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC

Alchemy and historical context

• Many commenters connect the result to the ancient dream of chrysopoeia (lead→gold), noting how alchemists were “right in principle” but off on mechanisms and required energies.
• Others emphasize alchemy as a spiritual/religious practice: transmuting “base” metals was a metaphor for purifying the soul, not just a get‑rich scheme.
• There’s discussion of Newton’s deep involvement in alchemy and speculation that he’d be thrilled by modern “giant alchemy machines” like the LHC.

What was actually done

• The novelty is producing gold from lead via ultra‑peripheral (near‑miss) heavy‑ion collisions, not head‑on bombardment.
• Only about 86 billion gold nuclei were created in Run 2, corresponding to ~29 picograms, and they were ejected at such high energies that they quickly fragmented; you can’t recover usable metal.
• The isotope involved is gold‑203, highly unstable, decaying within about a minute to radioactive mercury‑203 and then to toxic thallium‑203.
• Commenters note this is not the first lab transmutation into gold; earlier work used other starting elements and produced trace stable gold‑197.

Scale, practicality, and economics

• Multiple back‑of‑the‑envelope calculations show that scaling this to even grams or ounces of gold would require absurd time, energy, and infrastructure—orders of magnitude beyond feasibility.
• Comparisons suggest it would be cheaper to tow a gold‑rich asteroid to Earth than to use accelerators as gold factories.
• Some discuss how much secret gold production could enter the market without moving prices; consensus is that LHC‑scale production is utterly negligible.

Why lead and gold?

• The thread notes historical reasons: similar density and softness, lead’s role in faking coins, and the idea that base metals “mature” into noble gold in the Earth.
• Modern nuclear perspective (difference of a few protons) is explicitly stated as something alchemists did not know.

Debate on CERN and big science

• One side calls CERN a glamorous but disproportionate use of limited science funds, with few direct applications.
• Others counter that large facilities yield spin‑offs (e.g., networking/compute tech), training, and successful project management examples, contrasting the LHC with the failed US SSC.

Broader reflections and humor

• Several comments extrapolate to far‑future scenarios: Dyson swarms and star‑powered element factories.
• Others see the result as emblematic of modern tech limits: we “know how” but can’t do it economically.
• The thread is heavy with jokes (ALHCemy, philosopher’s stone as a 27‑km ring, anime‑style transmutation circles, BTC/finance gags) while acknowledging that, scientifically, this is a neat but highly impractical confirmation of nuclear theory.