Making gold by nuclear transmutation
Glenn T. SeaborgKjell AleklettALICE Collaboration
This page delivers no verdict; it presents claims and evidence with their sources. No theory in science is absolute. Method
For everyone
Turning one element into another, an old goal of the alchemists, became possible with nuclear physics. Seaborg's team converted bismuth into gold in an accelerator in 1980. In 2025 the ALICE experiment at CERN measured gold being produced when lead nuclei graze past one another in collisions. In both cases the amount is tiny and the cost enormous.
For specialists
Aleklett and colleagues bombarded a 209Bi target at the Bevalac with relativistic 12C and 20Ne ions and measured gold isotopes among the fragmentation products. ALICE used zero-degree calorimeters to identify 203Au and other gold isotopes formed when electromagnetic dissociation in ultraperipheral Pb–Pb collisions strips three protons (and some neutrons) from 208Pb. About 86 billion gold nuclei, roughly 29 picograms, were estimated to have been produced across the four experiments during LHC Run 2 (2015–2018). The nuclei break apart within microseconds on striking the beam pipe.
Claims
Evidence
Connections
Sources
- Article (1981). Energy dependence of 209Bi fragmentation in relativistic nuclear collisions. Physical Review C 23, 1044–1046DOI 10.1103/PhysRevC.23.1044archive
- Article (2025). Proton emission in ultraperipheral Pb–Pb collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV. Physical Review C 111, 054906DOI 10.1103/PhysRevC.111.054906archive
- Web (2025). ALICE detects the transformation of lead into gold at the LHC. ALICE Collaboration, CERNalice-collaboration.web.cern.charchive
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Athena contributors. (2026). Making gold by nuclear transmutation. Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/nukleer-donusum/
@misc{athena_nukleer_donusum,
title = {Making gold by nuclear transmutation},
author = {{Athena contributors}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/nukleer-donusum/}},
note = {Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Accessed: 2026-11-01}
}Added: September 27, 2026 · Last changed: September 27, 2026 · Page history