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The promise of transforming basic metals into gold has transformed some of the greatest minds in history, from ancient Egyptians to Sir Isaac Newton.
But now a start-up in Silicon Valley claims to have finally cracked the thousand-year-old puzzles of alchemy-by using the nuclear fusion technology.
Marathon fusion claims to have discovered a method of converting mercury into gold by bombing mercury isotopes with high-energy neutrons.
The neutrons are released during the core fusion when two hydrogen isotopes are forced to form helium.
This means that the alchemy process can be carried out in addition to the generation of electricity.
“In contrast to previous attempts, our method is massively scalable, pragmatically accessible and economically irresistible,” said Marathon Fusion. “This marks the beginning of a new golden age.”
The company, which develops ways to process and recycling fuel for the aspiring fusion industry, has published a scientific paper using the proposed transmutation method. It has not yet been checked by experts.
The history of alchemy extends thousands of years and has long focused on transforming metals into gold and looking for an elixir of immortality.
Thousands of years have been thinking about thousands of years like Newton, the English physicist, who developed the mathematical law of universal gravity at the end of the 17th century.
Many dreamed of creating a “stone of the philosopher”, which is used as a catalyst for the changeover of basic metals such as lead into gold.
The idea of marathon is based on the well -behaved process of nuclear fusion on the replacement of materials.
The merger takes place when two isotopes made of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium are forced to create helium, which releases high energy subatomar particles that are referred to as neutrons.
It is achieved by heating the Deuterium and Tritium atoms to extreme temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius and then limiting them into a narrow space so that they collide.
The process becomes self -supporting when helium atoms collide with the fuel particles, transmit their energy and ensure that the reaction continues.
However, fusion reactors typically contain other materials, including beryllium, lead or lithium isotopes, to ensure that the mix contains continuously enough tritium.
These are known as “multipliers” because when they are hit by a neutron, they publish two neutrons in their place. These additional neutrons then react with lithium to produce tritium.
Marathon’s method uses Mercury-198, a common form of Mercury, as a multiplier. When these atoms are hit by a neutron, these atoms turn into a less stable shape, which is referred to as Mercury-197.
