Lead was transmuted into gold back in 2002. What the LHC did was make quite a lot of it using the same technique of near miss collisions.
This will never be cost effective. Since we are able to mutate elements we know it was possible to transmitted an element into another one playing with nuclear activation and disintegration paths. Using the LHC to do this is excessively costly.
Kind of hilarious, actually. All that energy to great an infinitesimally small amount of gold is a perfect microcosm of our society.
Well, it’s somewhat an allegory of the project to send a man or colonize Mars.
16th Century Alehemists Hate this One Weird Trick!
Step 1. Find a bajillion dollars
Turns out, it’s way easier to turn gold into lead
Well CERN better make the transformation last long enough that I can sell my block of gold to someone before it turns back to lead.
Took them long enough
Knowingly
The element gold will go down the same path as carbon lattice diamond, as tech improves cost to make gold will go down.
Gold will be made in nuclear fusion factories just like diamonds are now made in factories supply will go up, and its value will plummet. Which is good. It is being used in actual applications instead of sitting as gold bars in vaults.
No it won’t. This is not even remotely cost effective both in terms of time and energy. You could literally collect more gold in a fraction of the time by just panning in a stream. There’s also the slight complication that the “gold” produced in this manner is basically atomic buckshot and ceases to exist very quickly after it’s formed.
TL;DR: this is making gold out of lead in only the most technical way, you don’t actually end up with any gold at the end of this process. You could just as easily claim you’re making x-rays out of lead using this same process.
Well, long time ago many people similar to you said that the carbon crystal called diamond won’t be made in factory. They once also said various isotopes and elements won’t be made in factory/reactor.
Not talking about this, current tech, but in the future. It will go the same path as diamond manufacturing. Technology does improve over time, just like it improved over time until we are making diamonds in factories cheaply.
Some companies already make new elements and isotopes in reactors as a business. These new elements and isotopes are being used in various applications. We will eventually be making gold it is just matter of time and tech.
The far more likely scenario is that large quantities of gold are extracted from the asteroid belt. Short of someone inventing a Star Trek style replicator it just won’t ever be cost effective to create something like gold through manipulation of individual atoms. Even if we had that tech in a reasonable cost effective form it would be used for making actually rare elements not something as abundant as gold.
Yes, you are right. Gold will be made in factory reactors, but those reactors may be used to make/supply other more profitable elements based on industrial demand.
Apples to oranges. Gold is an element while diamond is just a specific lattice of carbon.
remind me 100 years.
I know that gold is an element, updated to avoid confusing the confused.
Nature of tech progress getting better over time applies to both. Many didn’t believe diamond can be made in factory until tech caught up. Tech advancement already makes new elements in current reactors. Fusion reactors are coming next.
Creating new isotopes, elements is already a business. Eventually, we will get to gold.
