![\"Alchemist\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/alchemist.png\")
<\/p>\nPhysicists at the Large Hadron Collider have accidentally turned lead into gold while trying to recreate the Big Bang.<\/p>\n
Researchers working on the “Alice” experiment at Cern in Switzerland produced tiny quantities of the precious metal while attempting to recreate conditions from moments after the dawn of the universe.<\/p>\n
Medieval alchemists had tried to turn lead into gold for centuries to no avail – but modern scientists achieved the feat by smashing atoms of the former together at extraordinarily high speeds.<\/p>\n
However, their yield was minuscule, totalling approximately 29 trillionths of a gram.<\/p>\n
Ancient alchemists long believed they could convert base metals like lead or copper into gold or silver through chemical processes.<\/p>\n
They even thought they could discover a cure for disease or a way of extending life.<\/p>\n
The practice, which began in ancient Egypt, India and China, eventually worked its way to Britain and Europe by the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
There, it became more of a mystical pursuit, but ultimately laid the ground for many of the processes used in modern chemistry.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, scientists are quite aware that lead and gold are distinct elements – one atom of lead has three more protons in its nucleus than one atom of gold.<\/p>\n
Ancient alchemists long believed they could convert base metals like lead or copper into gold or silver through chemical processes<\/p>\n
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GETTY<\/p>\n
Removing protons from a nucleus requires overcoming the strong force which binds particles together with immense power – the sort available inside the LHC.<\/p>\n
Electric fields can manipulate protons due to their charge, but the field strength needed is one million times stronger than a lightning bolt.<\/p>\n
Scientists at Cern generate these extreme conditions by accelerating lead nuclei to velocities approaching light speed.<\/p>\n
They are specifically looking at high-energy collisions between the nuclei to mimic the extreme temperature and energy density that would have been found in the fractions of a second after the Big Bang.<\/p>\n
When two nuclei narrowly miss each other rather than colliding directly, the electromagnetic force between them becomes extraordinarily intense.<\/p>\n
SCIENCE BREAKTHROUGHS – READ MORE:<\/p>\n
![\"Alice](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/alice-collider.jpg\")
Researchers working on the Alice experiment at Cern in Switzerland produced tiny quantities of gold<\/p>\n
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WIKIMEDIA COMMONS<\/p>\n
This proximity creates rapidly fluctuating fields that cause nuclei to vibrate and can rip protons from the atom altogether.<\/p>\n
A lead nucleus that loses exactly three protons becomes gold, completing the transformation that alchemists once sought through chemistry alone.<\/p>\n
At the LHC, the Alice experiment generates roughly 89,000 gold nuclei every second during operations.<\/p>\n
Researchers also observed the creation of other elements, including thallium when a single proton is removed, and mercury when two protons are stripped away.<\/p>\n
Seeing gold with the naked eye has so far been impossible for the scientists involved.<\/p>\n
![\"Gold\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/gold.jpg\")
The Alice experiment generates roughly 89,000 gold nuclei every second – though nowhere near enough to see with the naked eye<\/p>\n
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WIKIMEDIA COMMONS<\/p>\n
Instead, the team relies on specialised instruments called zero-degree calorimeters to count how many protons have been ejected.<\/p>\n
Head-on collisions between lead nuclei result in complete destruction due to the strong nuclear force.<\/p>\n
Near-misses, however, can change the elements entirely.<\/p>\n
Once a lead nucleus loses protons, it strays off the path required to circulate within the collider’s vacuum beam pipe.<\/p>\n
Within fractions of fractions of a second, these altered nuclei crash into the pipe’s walls.<\/p>\n
This collision effect gradually diminishes the beam’s intensity over time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider have accidentally turned lead into gold while trying to recreate the Big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[49,48,314,66,12384],"class_list":{"0":"post-571969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-physics","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-sgg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}