Published : 16 Aug 2026, 02:12 AM
Updated : 08 Sep 2026, 09:33 AM
Scientists have made a breakthrough finding of turning lead into gold, although only in extremely small quantities.
According to The Independent, researchers at CERN’s ALICE experiment have shown that lead nuclei can be transformed into gold by removing exactly three protons from each nucleus.
Lead and gold are different chemical elements because they have different numbers of protons. A lead nucleus has 82 protons, while gold has 79. Removing three protons therefore changes lead into gold.
The process, however, requires conditions far beyond ordinary chemistry.
Protons carry an electric charge, so sufficiently strong electromagnetic fields can push them out of an atomic nucleus.
But nuclei are also held together by the strong nuclear force, meaning the electric field must be extraordinarily powerful, roughly a million times stronger than the fields associated with lightning.
The British newspaper says the ALICE researchers generate these conditions by firing beams of lead nuclei at almost the speed of light inside the Large Hadron Collider.
Most of the nuclei do not collide head-on. Instead, they pass extremely close to one another, allowing their electromagnetic fields to interact without the nuclei being destroyed in a direct collision, it reported.
At such short distances, the electromagnetic field between the passing nuclei becomes strong enough to disturb them.
The rapidly changing field can cause a nucleus to lose protons. If exactly three protons are removed from a lead nucleus, the resulting nucleus is gold, The Independent reported.
The researchers cannot directly observe the newly created gold nuclei. Instead, they use specialised detectors called zero-degree calorimetres to measure the particles emitted when protons are stripped from the lead nuclei.
From these measurements, they estimate that about 89,000 gold nuclei are produced every second while the lead beams are circulating.
The process can also produce other elements. Removing one proton from lead produces thallium, while removing two produces mercury.
The gold does not remain in the collider for long. Losing protons changes the nucleus enough to alter its trajectory, meaning it no longer follows the precise orbit required to remain inside the Large Hadron Collider's vacuum beam pipe. Within microseconds, the altered nucleus can hit the pipe walls.
As a result, this production of gold reduces the intensity of the lead beam rather than providing a useful source of the precious metal.
According to The Independent, understanding the process is nevertheless important because these nuclear interactions affect how collider beams behave and could help scientists design and operate future, more powerful particle accelerators.
