Not Entirely Cost Effective
The team behind this discovery… used a unique way to create gold. Instead of crashing lead atoms head-on, they looked at what happens when the atoms just barely miss each other. Researchers explained that when this happens, powerful electromagnetic fields around the atoms can cause them to change into different elements.
The machine can create about 89,000 gold atoms every second,
I know, I know. We’ll be glittering beings, richer than God, with hats and shoes and mattresses all made of gold.
Ah. Bugger.
And I suppose there’s the small matter of the electricity bill, running costs, maintenance, staffing, and so forth. Roughly $1 billion a year.
You may resume your dreary, humdrum lives, with mattresses made of foam rubber, springs, and polyester.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
I did chuckle at the article’s use of the image below, which rather exaggerates the quantity of gold actually produced.
These transmutation efforts are, we’re told, “still far from practical use.”
I was looking forward to the solid gold shoes.
Keep your mind out of his uterus.
And in airbrushing reality news.
Is reality optional now?
Keep your mind out of his uterus.
OK, the scar is too high to be a Pfannenstiel, but the dimpled bit on his right is about McBurney’s point, so either the worst appendectomy scar or worst faux uterus transplant?
Meanwhile, a racist walks among us.
Is reality optional now?
Apparently. I can’t tell is this is an elaborate piss take, but if not, at least they have your health in mind.
¡NSFW and you might want to use a VPN!
OTOH, the But [sic] Plug Olympics, Strap On Party, and other things are just peachy.
If you can’t make an event at Camp Crinkle, put this one on your calendar.
Health regulations require that genitals, including buttocks, be covered in the meal tent.
Good to know, I guess.
I’m going to need a moment to process that one.
[ Brings out tray of fatigued-looking sandwiches, checks clientele for regulation buttock-coverings. ]
Unstable isotopes, and thus radioactive. Money that really would burn a hole in your pocket.
And each of those fantastically expensive atoms of gold winks out of existence about as close to immediately as it’s possible to get, which rather dashes those hopes of solid gold shoes.
There, there.
Having consulted Grok, I have news that may be relevant.
It turns out that a typical gentleman’s wedding ring of pure gold would weigh around seven grammes and would contain somewhere in the region of 2.14 × 10²² gold atoms. Which would take the LHC about 7.6 billion years to generate, at current rates, assuming some way were found to prevent the gold atoms from winking out of existence before you could store them in a shoe box.