Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2022/02/13/lets-turn-lead-into-gold-shall-we.html
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No thank you. The last time I tried alchemy, I lost my arm and my younger brother’s body was taken beyond the gate. I had to bind his soul to a suit of armor.
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It’s very real, possible, and has, in fact, been done. One atom at a time. In a highly unprofitable process.
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Well, yeah, people have gotten really good at that. The alchemists were mistaken in thinking all metals were the same element so their particular dream of turning lead into gold is out. But by now we’ve even created a whole range of new substances unknown in the natural world for both better and worse. We also dropped the article al and call it chemistry to go with our more solid understanding.
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I feel like that’s a pun I don’t quite understand. 
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I’m not shocked, well not that not not shocked.
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My alchemy trick is making pizza disappear. Not everyone can do it.
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Simplest way is to leave it anywhere accessible when you have a lab.
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RIP Bill Rieflin…
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I suspect that the economics don’t work out for any of them; but if you are getting into nuclear chemistry I’d imagine that slumming it with gold, rather than going with one of the more obscure but more valuable ones. Looks like Rhodium is worth around twice as much by mass.
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I haven’t kept up with the subject, but there used to be talk about a stability island around 114 where elements might be at least almost stable. If you want those you have little choice but to use transmutation. I have no idea what kind of application could justify the price, though.
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Also radioactive. The gold produced by knocking protons out of the nuclei of heavier elements is an unnatural unstable heavy isotope due to the surplus of neutrons left over.
There’d be nothing left for Goldfinger to do to it.
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Crypto?
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Any pizza can be a personal pizza if you try hard and believe in yourself.
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Experiments in Applied and Theoretical Astrophysics for Families of Cryptonecessity.
kap-process transposition for belt mining minds with access to magnetic recombination.
Bathic and Abyssal seabed extraction for no-anchorage robotic isopure deliverables.
Remining California for the arsene averse; tapping a vein in no human territory.
Upcycle that mine yourself! Make gravimetric golem whose breaths are torrents.
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must be quite a market for 235U … somewhere
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Interestingly, nuclear fuel is the one thing that has been seriously proposed to be generated by transmuting elements. But even then, the costs didn’t work out.
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