CERN Physicists Observe Conversion of Lead into Gold

Near-miss collisions between high-energy lead nuclei at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider generate intense electromagnetic fields that can knock out protons and transform lead into fleeting quantities of gold nuclei.

Illustration of an ultraperipheral collision where the two lead (208Pb) ion beams at the LHC pass by close to each other without colliding; in the electromagnetic dissociation process, a photon interacting with a nucleus can excite oscillations of its internal structure and result in the ejection of small numbers of neutrons (two) and protons (three), leaving the gold (203Au) nucleus behind. Image credit: CERN.

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