Posted on 05/09/2025 1:44:01 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The Philosopher’s Stone.
We spent $5 billion building it and it produced less than a speck of gold. Got a long way to go to make it cost effective.
Who spent $5 billion building it?
Gold is only one valence electron away from lead.
If only ancient alchemists had known that all you need is a particle accelerator 27 miles long.
By we, I meant the organization that built it, mostly Europe but the US contributed at least $531 million toward it.
https://ssti.org/blog/us-completes-531m-contribution-large-hadron-collider-project
They say they can do it, but it is a darned awful expensive way to “mine” gold.
Cheaper to snag gold off passing asteroids. Or open up the mountain ranges in California.
Are they the ones creating portals to other dimensions?
Lol.
I thought this stunt was done in the 50’s.
Glenn Seaborg, 1951 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, succeeded in transmuting a minute quantity of lead, (possibly en route from bismuth) in 1980 into gold. The experiment was carried out, running particle beams through the Bevalac that took about about $5,000 an hour in costs to run. “It would cost more than 1,000,000,000,000,000 dollars per ounce to produce gold by this experiment,” Seaborg told the Associated Press that year. The going rate for an ounce of gold at the time? About $560.
That would be Black Mesa, and let’s just say there were unforeseen consequences.
They are not saying which isotope was created.
Sounds like it is NOT Au 197
“That would be Black Mesa, and let’s just say there were unforeseen consequences.”
- - - - - - - -
Hmm. Black Mesa. Have not heard that one.
Details? Anything resembling USS Philadelphia? . . .
Maybe save money by finding a guy named rumplestilskin and give him a big stack of hay?
Glenn Seaborg. Most people never heard of him but he was a genuine American alchemist. He created most of the elements past Uranium. He also made Gold just to say he did that too.
It’s a reference to the game Half Life, but in that universe there is a ship like the Philadelphia, the Borealis.
Geneva has a lab named cern with money to burn
Working on the impossible dream
They work night and day with no time to play
but not all’s like it seems
I’ve been told on a story quite old
they have it in their head
they can make gold from the lead
but I’m not quite sold
They shoot a neutron beam
and let it sorta careen
As it sped it hit the lead
and then it split the scene
it made some gold is the story they told
but split up after hitting the walls
with nothing to show but a big gaping hole
with billions all gone who makes the calls
Thank you for the information.
You beat me to it, and with more details than I could have given off the top of my head. But I remembered that from when it was first in the news.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.