Hate to break it to ya, but gold has been manufactured.
Gold synthesis in a particle accelerator is possible in many ways. The Spallation Neutron Source has a liquid mercury target which will be transmuted into gold, platinum, and iridium, which are lower in atomic number than mercury.[citation needed]
Gold synthesis in a nuclear reactor
Gold was synthesized from mercury by neutron bombardment in 1941, but the isotopes of gold produced were all radioactive.[12] In 1924, a Japanese physicist, Hantaro Nagaoka, accomplished the same feat.[13]
Gold can currently be manufactured in a nuclear reactor by the irradiation of either platinum or mercury.
Only the mercury isotope 196Hg, which occurs with a frequency of 0.15% in natural mercury, can be converted to gold by slow neutron capture, and following electron capture, decay into gold’s only stable isotope, 197Au. When other mercury isotopes are irradiated with slow neutrons, they also undergo neutron capture, but either convert into each other or beta decay into the thallium isotopes 203Tl and 205Tl.
Using fast neutrons, the mercury isotope 198Hg, which composes 9.97% of natural mercury, can be converted by splitting off a neutron and becoming 197Hg, which then decays into stable gold. This reaction, however, possesses a smaller activation cross-section and is feasible only with unmoderated reactors.
It is also possible to eject several neutrons with very high energy into the other mercury isotopes in order to form 197Hg. However such high-energy neutrons can be produced only by particle accelerators.[clarification needed].
In 1980, Glenn Seaborg transmuted several thousand atoms of bismuth into gold at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. His experimental technique, using nuclear physics, was able to remove protons and neutrons from the bismuth atoms. Seaborg’s technique was far too expensive to enable the routine manufacture of gold but his work is the closest yet to emulating the mythical Philosopher’s Stone.[14][15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#Gold_synthesis_in_an_accelerator
Correction....akin to MANUFACTURE of gold such that it is practicable which is after all the whole purpose.
Sorry for assuming that was understood.