The result is a substance that's chemically "identical" to some other element ~ but maybe with some minor differences here and there AND, best of all, with a different atomic weight than you'd otherwise have guessed.
Let's say you can take hydrogen and helium and squeeze them together such that they form a substance that's chemically identical to titanium. The big deal would be that it would still weigh less than air. You could build super strong metallic structures lighter than feathers and able to be tossed about by modest magnetic fields. (NOTE: Not that you can do that but I'm sure you see the idea).
One of the favorite deals being done by the guys into "super atoms" is to take a gold film maybe 2 microns thick and then build never before seen in nature crystals on top of that film using other elements. They start the first layer of the crystal by squeezing the gold nucleus into close proximity with the nucleus of the other element(s) and then go from there.
This is the exact opposite of creating a substance and then gold plating it ~ here you start with the plating and build the substance TO THE CHARACTERISTICS YOU WANT.
I'm busy trying to find some company that's got a commercially marketable product built this way.
Note, if you think the current financial collapse is really bad wait until this stuff hits the market and undercuts all products, all commoditities, and everything else you can think of. Everybody will feel like the buggy whip manufacturers when Elwood Haynes and Karl Benz started rolling real production automobiles out the door in 1894.
Then it's not real silver.
Well if that isn’t the cat’s muawiyah!