Reference Message Network reported on May 17 according to a May 14 report on the website of Russia's Komsomolskaya Pravda. Alchemists in the Middle Ages once tried to extract gold from cheap metals. They failed to find the "Philosopher's Stone." But today, even in small nuclear physics laboratories, lead can be turned into gold through experiments using large hadron colliders.
In the process of obtaining "man-made" gold, no spells, magic rituals, mercury, sulfur, or other traditional alchemical tools are used; only natural physics is relied upon. When lead nuclei collide and "knock off" three protons from the atomic nucleus, the lead nucleus can turn into a gold nucleus. However, this requires accelerating the collided nuclei to about one-tenth the speed of light. Scientists accelerate heavier nuclei to near-light speed in this way to simulate the environment at the beginning of the universe, attempting to understand what happened to matter in the moments after the Big Bang.
However, don't expect these experiments to cause a crash in gold prices. The gold produced from lead cannot be sold because its existence is very brief, and only 178,000 gold nuclei are formed per second, which is less than one ten-billionth of the number of atoms in one gram of gold. If the gold produced from lead is invisible and intangible, then where does the value of these experiments lie?
Yuri Oganessian, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and scientific head of the Nuclear Reaction Laboratory of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, responded by saying: "Indeed, it can be said that physicists have realized the dream of alchemists. Alchemists misunderstood the amount of energy required to convert one element into another. Their alchemical experiments affected only the electron shells of atoms, while the change needed to occur in the atomic nucleus. This requires millions of times more energy! Removing outer electrons from an atom (which determines the chemical properties of the element) requires energy measured in electron volts; while stripping protons or neutrons from the atomic nucleus requires energy measured in megaelectron volts. The energy required to transform lead into gold falls into the latter category."
"Turning lead into gold" has what significance for science? Oganessian stated that the purpose of such experiments is not to obtain gold or other elements but to understand how nuclear forces act. He said: "Modern science considers the material world as the result of four fundamental interactions, namely electromagnetic force, weak interaction, strong interaction, and gravity. Regarding electromagnetic force and weak interaction, there are rigorous theories that can well explain and predict everything related to them. Strong interaction is the force that keeps protons and neutrons at extremely high density within a very small volume in the atomic nucleus, and it remains a mystery to this day. Currently, there are only various applicable theoretical models with limited scope, but no unified and rigorous theory. Moreover, we haven't even found any clues in this regard. Scientists who have conducted the experiments we are talking about have been studying nuclear reactions involving strong interaction forces for many years."
This scholar pointed out: "We want to know under what conditions, with how much energy and mass, substance transformation can occur. If we learn to control nuclear forces, it will bring unprecedented opportunities to humanity." (Translated by Liran)
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