Mildly Interesting

21124 readers

461 users here now

This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC (www.home.cern)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The ALICE analysis shows that, during Run 2 of the LHC (2015–2018), about 86 billion gold nuclei were created at the four major experiments. In terms of mass, this corresponds to just 29 picograms (2.9 ×10-11 g). [...] While the dream of medieval alchemists has technically come true, their hopes of riches have once again been dashed.

I mean, we still can't turn a ring of lead into a ring of gold, but this is really neat.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Lead, thallium, mercury... metals not friendly to direct human contact. I find it rad that if we add a few more protons we get a pretty, shiny metal that won't melt our brains.*

*that we know of

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Humanity's history with gold would suggest that it is extremely capable of melting brains.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

True. There was that one annoying dude on GoT that experienced such.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Also we've basically made the dreams of alchemists a reality. Still in the proof of concept stage but it's now safe to say the idea of turning less valuable stuff into gold isn't as crazy as it initially sounds.