Can You Make Gold From Scratch? Here Are The Possibilities

The methods for retrieving gold from mineral ores cost quite a lot. How about creating it from scratch and get rid of all the fuss of extraction?

It is possible to create gold simply by adding or subtracting nucleons to Lead (Pb) or Bismuth (Bi) by bombarding them with high energy neutrons. In 1980, at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the Nobel Prize winner, Glen Seaborg managed to transmute several thousand atoms of bismuth into gold. So production of gold is possible, but it requires equipment worth a zillion dollars.

Turning other elements to gold is, however, not a new idea. The Alchemists have been trying to do it for centuries.

If you do not like the Alchemist’s idea of turning other metals to gold and want to ‘create from scratch,’ then there is another way of doing it. All you need are two neutron stars, dense enough to fit New York state in a pinhead. You have to make the stars collide at high-speed, and they will explode into a burst of radiation, producing tons of gold in seconds.

Yup, that got a little too hypothetical. Still, it is kind of interesting that we can create the precious metal. If you don’t want gold that costs a million dollars an ounce, you would better stick to the good old ways of mining ores.

Do you know any technique? Share it with us in the comments section.