Have you ever heard the legend of medieval alchemists who sought to transform lead into gold, well, yes, that search that seemed magical and impossible has just been achieved, but not with potions, secret formulas or anything like that, but with technology in the largest destroyer of atoms in the world, the large drone collider at CERN, where physicists finally managed to directly observe the transformation of lead nuclei into gold nuclei.
The Elice experiment team used a highly precise technology called CGC, zero degree calorimeters, to detect and analyze gold nuclei generated from collisions of lead nuclei traveling almost at the speed of light. During these collisions, the extreme environment generated allows the creation of a state of matter called quark and gluon plasma. In these conditions, intense electromagnetic fields release virtual photons that when interacting with lead nuclei result in the loss of protons, losing three protons. Lead with 82 protons is transformed into gold with 79 protons.
The precision of the experiment impresses, the Elice detectors are capable of differentiating massive collisions with thousands of particles from rare events, such as the creation of these gold nuclei. Approximately 89,000 gold nuclei are produced per second in the machine during these specific collisions, however, they exist for minimal fractions of a second before disintegrating when colliding with the accelerator infrastructure.
While the ancient alchemists believed in chemical processes to transform metals or in particle physics, they found that this transmutation is only possible under extreme and subatomic conditions. CERN's historic achievement is not only a scientific milestone but a symbolic tribute to ancient alchemical ambitions.
The Alice experiment is a global collaboration that involves scientists of various nationalities granting the world's largest particle accelerator in Switzerland, that facility is a pioneer in advanced research that can redefine our understanding of fundamental physics and the universe, although it will not replace traditional gold mines this advance offers important insights for the theoretical and practical physics of accelerators.
Understanding these processes helps predict particle ace losses, improving the performance and safety of future accelerators.
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