Alchemists befuddled as Next-gen scientists turn lead into gold

Science has been looking for the means to turn lead into gold. The story goes way back to the alchemists of ancient times who were attempting the transformation of both the material and spiritual. Endeavors of self-purification were symbolized with the concept of turning lead into gold, and also quite literally the seeking of a chemical solution for changing actual lead into genuine gold.

Unfortunately, historical alchemists failed in their attempts. Modern science may have succeeded. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Hadron Collider. The basics are this particle accelerator spanning a distance of 16 plus miles fires particles in opposite directions at almost, and it’s a hair shy, light speed so they can smash into each other and be analyzed. With one particular study they aimed two beams of lead ions at each other and in the instances where instead of colliding they just missed, something magical happened.

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So as not be lost down the rabbit hole in science terminology. The basics are that when the lead particles glanced off each other, the magnetic force was strong enough to pull 3 protons out of the lead Pb (the symbol of lead on the Periodic table) turning the element into Au. Gold!

The newly created gold lasted less than a second before smashing into the wall of the collider or collapsing into other particles. Nevertheless for that brief moment in time, humans have put their collective genius together and made gold out of lead.

As science continues to push the boundaries between imagination and realization, you might be wondering what else have we been doing. Here are a few really cool endeavors.

AI has been put to work discovering on ways to virtually test medication for humans without having to actually physically test them. One study was successful in having AI predict if patients would be resistant to medication for a non-small cell lung cancer treatment. One of the aims being to match patients with the right cancer treatment drugs.

Robots and AI to the research rescue.

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How about some major leaps forward in tackling environmental concerns. Proponents of the no kill movement can be encouraged by advancements in lab grown meats. Though still somewhat early in this new industry's development, tackling pollutions caused from the meat industry via farming and delivery of animal stock would be welcomed. The thought of chicken made in a petri dish can be off putting to some, but delicacies like truffles and blue cheese were also once largely unfavorable.

The sun.Image from Canva - Photo by Thomas Faull

Most people know about the safety fears around nuclear fission reactors. Did you see the mini series on Chernobyl? Advancements in creating energy from Nuclear fusion have made some recent breakthroughs. Instead of splitting atoms apart to make energy, fusion is combining atomic particles together. A good example would be our sun which works on fusion. Since the 1950's science has been trying to pull more energy out than they were putting in to make the fusion reaction, and now they have.

Astronaut drives rover on the moon.media2.giphy.com

So back to the collider and turning lead into gold. Besides a get rich scheme, there's actually a lot of benefits gained from gold other than just its aesthetic appeal. Gold is a highly efficient conductor that remains free of corrosion. Gold is used in most sophisticated electronic devices including your tv, GPS systems, cell phones, and most of your appliances. Something particularly amazing is NASA uses gold-coated polyester film to stabilize the temperature of their spacecrafts.

The Hadron Collider at great cost was able to make gold from lead for less than a second. It would appear that most innovations take time to yield any sort of transformative impact. You might argue, if we want the good stuff, we got to start somewhere and collectively be patient.