4 ms·
Turning iron to gold is not possible as a chemical reaction. They are elements. You need a nuclear reaction.
by outworlder 4y ago
Turning iron to gold is not possible as a chemical reaction. They are elements. You need a nuclear reaction.
- 40yearoldman 4y agoAhh! So it is possible, just need a nuclear reaction!
- trompetenaccoun 4y agoIt's quite simple: Gather a sufficient amount of iron (4 million times earth's mass will probably do). Bring it all in one place, it will naturally compact. Wait for the resulting supernova - you do want to keep your distance for this step. Lastly collect gold and other heavy elements.
- outworlder 4y agoYeah. It's even better since you are starting with iron, don't have to wait billions of years for everything to burn first.
- trompetenaccoun 4y agoExactly right. And to think there are still simpletons who dig in the ground for gold like neolithic primitives. Of course the doubters don't want us to know about this simple trick for turning iron into gold.
- didericis 4y agoI have a vague memory of someone or some article saying there’s a way to get from lead to gold if you really wanted to with some combination of available nuclear tech, but it’d be completely absurd/ludicrously expensive (I think the context was somebody humoring what would be needed for atomic level assembly/star trek replicator stuff). I assume the same would apply to iron.
- andrewflnr 4y agoYeah, but even worse. You need to add a lot of nucleons to iron just to get to (impure, radioactive) lead, and then from there to gold.
- cowpig 4y agoIron (26) -> Lead (82) -> Gold (79) How does that work?
- andrewflnr 4y agoHa, woops. I was just assuming Gold had higher atomic number. But I don't know, maybe a convenient positron emission decay path.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoYou smash a proton into it and knock a light atom nucleus off. Works every time about 2% of the time. For the stuff that doesn't end up as gold you can just keep hitting it with neutrons until it's heavy enough to try again.