Making Gold from Lead - or Maybe Even Bismuth?

 Alchemists worked feverishly to convert lead into gold throughout history. Lead, being heavier than most elements and therefore resembling gold in weight, was thought to be a near cousin. If only they could manipulate through heat or alloy to make gold!!! These alchemists referred to this study as chrysopoeia - referring to the transmutation of base metal into precious metal.

Some of the most brilliant thinkers of the time tried their hands at it. Sir Isaac Newton, today revered as the father of modern physics and the inventor of calculus, described a recipe for the Philosophers’ Stone, a legendary substance that reputedly could turn base metals like iron and lead into gold. Note that it is the discovery of the relationship of a mathematical function that can determine instantaneous acceleration, or, even the area or volume under a continuous function. Without this, no rocket could have been sent to the moon - the notion of interplanetary travel would also be impossible. So..... the guy was a genius. Yet, because he contemplated changing the very identity of a metal from one to another, he was thought to be mad. Others would be marked as charlatans. Among the list of so-called zany scientists were Robert Boyle and Paracelsus.

The problem with their delving into alchemy was that they thought the two metals were related fundamentally - that one was a hybrid of the other and that chemistry or the introduction of a chemical agent could change lead to gold. They did not know that the nucleus of the atom held the secret to the identity of the two metals.

 Well, we have news for all of those who think changing lead into gold is ridiculous. In the 20th century we learned that by breaking the nucleus of an atom, a different element can be formed. Uranium can be broken to form xenon and strontium. Hydrogen isotopes can be fused together to form helium.

In the 1980's, a scientist named  David J. Morrissey  used bismuth as the target of his experiment, and he turned an extremely small amount of of bismuth into gold! Bismuth had a nucleus that was easier to manage. Morrissey focused carbon and neon nuclei accelerating at nearly light speed and then slammed them into foils of bismuth. Checking the mess that was left, they found four protons had been removed from a bismuth atom to produce gold. Some gold isotopes were also formed.

Of course the unfortunate thing about it all is that in the 1980's particle beams at the university ran $5000 an hour. A colleague of Morrissey's (in the 90's) stated that, "It would cost more than one quadrillion dollars per ounce to produce gold by this experiment today." Well, it's 2021 as the writing of this note - gold was $560 an ounce then.

So today, rather than calling someone a daydreamer for thinking about the transmutation of lead to gold, one would probably think such a person a dreamer for thinking he could change lead to gold and make a profit. But, how often have we thought folks crazy for thinking they could improve a system to bring about transformative change? Happens all the time, right?

The moral: Think twice before you call someone "crazy."

For more interesting info on the subject, see https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/isaac-newton-worlds-most-famous-alchemist