The dream of the ancient alchemy dream to turn gold has quietly become the reality of Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), although this did not make medieval alchemists rich.
In a discovery published in Physical Review C on May 7, Alice collaborated to measure and quantify the conversion of lead to gold during a high-energy collision of the world’s largest particle accelerator.
“Our detectors can handle frontal collisions that produce thousands of particles, while also being sensitive to collisions that produce only a few particles at a time, thus allowing the “nuclear transport” process of rare electromagnetics,” says Marco van Leeuwen, “Alice Elice Eleuwen.
Unlike the chemical process attempted by medieval alchemists, this modern variation occurs through nuclear physics. When the lead nuclei at the LHC are very close to each other without actual collision – in what scientists call “hypertransmitting collisions”, they create a strong electromagnetic field that can knock out protons from the lead nucleus.
Scavenging three protons from the lead nucleus (which contains 82 protons) results in gold (with 79 protons). The measurements indicate that this process occurs frequently.
What makes these findings particularly noteworthy is the scale. During Run 2 of LHC (2015-2018), approximately 86 billion gold cores were created in four main experiments at CERN. While this sounds impressive, it’s equivalent to 29 Piquets (2.9×10-11 g) – even a trillions of times it takes for a small piece of jewelry.
In the event of a collision with the LHC’s bundle tube or other components, gold also exists in just one second.
“Due to Alice’s unique features of ZDC, the current analysis is the first to systematically detect and analyze signatures for gold production in LHC experiments,” explains Uliana Dmitrieva, a collaborative partner of Alice.
The researchers used a professional detector called a zero degree calorimeter (ZDC) to count the interactions, resulting in the emission of protons and neutrons, which corresponds to the creation of different elements: lead, thallium, mercury, and gold.
These measurements show that during the lead-lead collision at the Alice collision point, the LHC currently produces gold at a maximum rate of about 89,000 cores per second.
These findings have not only satisfactory scientific curiosity. As John Jowett, who is Alice’s collaborative, points out: “The results also test and improve the theoretical model of electromagnetic dissociation, which is used to understand and predict beam loss, a major limitation on LHC and Future Colliders’ performance.”
Perhaps most striking is the comparison with conventional collisions: the cross-section of gold produced (5.3 barn) is comparable to the total cross-section of standard drug-resistant collisions, a major focus of the LHC physics program.
In other words, this kind of nuclear alchemy occurs almost as frequently as major collision physicists have studied – although gold decays rapidly and is completely undetectable by the naked eye.
The study also marks the first direct measurement of the process using LHC data, which is based on theoretical predictions and previous experiments on lower energies.
Although medieval alchemists may have once again shattered their hopes, the study provides valuable insights into electromagnetic processes and practical data in high-energy nuclear physics to improve future collision machine designs.
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