New Delhi: Medieval alchemists dreamed of the transmutation of base metals into precious metals, a quest known as chrysopoeia, motivated by the fact that lead has a similar density to gold, a metal long coveted for its colour and rarity. The dawn of nuclear physics in the 20th century revealed that heavy elements could transform into others naturally through radioactive decay or in laboratories through a bombardment by protons. Gold has been previously produced in this manner. The ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) detector on the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, has for the first time detected the transmutation of lead into gold by a novel........

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