Authored by Peter Earle via TheDailyEconomy.org,

In a remarkable feat of modern physics, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have managed to recreate one of humanity's oldest fantasies: turning lead into gold. By smashing lead atoms together at near-light speeds, the resulting collisions generate immense heat and energy — conditions so extreme that they momentarily produce a flurry of exotic particles and even atoms with the same number of protons as gold. Could it be that the alchemists' long-elusive dream — transmuting the worthless into the sublime — has at last been realized? And not in cluttered stone laboratories thick with incense and delusion, but in the sleek, humming vacuum tubes of a particle collider hidden miles under the Swiss Alps?

But there's a catch: these gold-like nuclei exist for only the tiniest sliver of time — less than a millionth of a second — before they decay or transform into something else. They don't last long enough to form stable atoms, much less shiny gold bars. That's because what's being created in these collisions isn't ordinary, stable gold. Instead, these are unstable isotopes — nuclei that may contain 79 protons (which defines gold) but often the wrong number of neutrons, or too much internal energy to hold themselves together. Lacking the necessary stability, and with no time to capture electrons and form full atoms, these proto-gold particles quickly disintegrate into other elements or radiation. It's an awe-inspiring display of physics at the edge of possibility, but it's a far cry from the practical transformation of lead into gold dreamed of by ancient alchemists.