4 ms·

Interesting article - however I am more interested in how to make real gold bars generally speaking. Although I suppose the first step is making the fake bars.

• marvin 19y ago
  If you could somehow create a cheap and powerful particle accelerator, gold could concievably be produced in macroscopic amounts by irradiating mercury-198 (10% by mass in naturally occuring mercury) with 6.8MeV gamma rays. There are other ways of doing it, but economics and practicality needs to be considered. It is probably easier to build a badass particle accelerator than a nuclear reactor. I am reasonably sure that most modern accelerator laboratories have done this experiment, but it is probably not economical with today's accelerators. (And imagine the capital costs!) This seems a very lucrative target for aspiring physicists. At a point in time this will probably become practical, but there will only be a small window in which it is economical to do so: once it becomes possible to perform large-scale nuclear gold transmutation, gold prices will plummet due to excessive supply.
  • jcl 19y ago
    once it becomes possible to perform large-scale nuclear gold transmutation, gold prices will plummet due to excessive supply. I suppose it depends on the economics and politics as much as the science. I notice that diamonds are still expensive, even though we can readily synthesize them.