Physics Meets Finance: Theoretical Consequences of Man-Made Gold
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In a remarkable feat of modern physics, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have managed to recreate one of humanity's oldest fantasies:
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The Mainichi
2 days ago
- The Mainichi
Scientists obtain unstable gold from lead, practical use uncertain
GENEVA (Kyodo) -- A team of scientists including those from Asian countries has successfully transformed lead into gold, though it disappeared in microseconds, with the discovery published in a U.S. physics magazine last month. The team's spokesperson at CERN, a research organization on the Swiss-French border, said that although it was only an experimental finding, it could help advance human knowledge and enable the development of advanced equipment in the future. Four experiments conducted between 2015 and 2018 at CERN, formally known as the European Organization for Nuclear Research, yielded the results. The team, which included scientists from India, South Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia and Thailand, studied what happens when two lead nuclei come very close to each other in a so-called near-miss collision. After the lead nuclei moved at nearly the speed of light, they confirmed that some protons and neutrons were pulled out of the core part of the atoms. During the experiments using the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerating machine, lead atoms were observed to lose three of their 82 protons, resulting in atoms of gold with 79 protons. Through such near-miss collisions, the team confirmed the change that produced up to 89,000 gold nuclei per second. The result of the analysis, which involved a total of 167 institutes across the world, was published by Physical Review C of the American Physical Society in May. Marco Van Leeuwen, the research team's spokesperson, said that the gold made in the tests existed only "for a short time, microseconds or even shorter," and weighed a combined 29 picograms. One picogram is a trillionth of one gram. It would take "billions of years to make one gram of gold," he said, but noted that the scientists' work aims to enhance atomic research and may have private sector applications, such as in medical equipment that produces X-ray images. Tatsuya Chujo, a Japanese guest researcher at CERN who participated in the experiments, said, "I was surprised and excited that gold can actually be created from special reactions." "It means that we can basically produce any kinds of elements in the world by this simple and pure reaction using a world class accelerator," said Chujo, a professor at the Institute of Pure and Applied Sciences of the University of Tsukuba.
Hans India
5 days ago
- Hans India
Dark Matter: The cosmic puzzle that still evades discovery
In 1933, Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky made a groundbreaking observation while studying the Coma Cluster, a collection of galaxies over 300 million light-years away. He noticed the galaxies were spinning far too quickly to be held together by the visible matter alone. The only explanation? There had to be unseen mass providing the extra gravitational pull. He called it 'dunkle Materie' — dark matter. Nearly 100 years later, dark matter remains one of the greatest mysteries in science. It makes up around 27% of the universe, yet no one has ever seen it. It doesn't emit, reflect, or absorb light, making it completely invisible to telescopes. But without its gravitational influence, galaxies would fall apart, and the structure of the universe itself wouldn't exist. The Gravity We Can't See Evidence for dark matter is overwhelming. Stars on the edges of spiral galaxies rotate at speeds far too fast for visible matter alone to account for. Galaxy clusters move as though they're wrapped in vast, invisible halos. Even the early universe's structure — from galaxies to vast filaments of cosmic webbing — appears to have been shaped by something unseen holding it all together. At one point, scientists suspected neutrinos might be the answer. These ghost-like particles are abundant and barely interact with matter. But they're too light and too fast-moving to form the kind of gravitational scaffolding needed. Where Are the Particles? Physicists turned to more exotic candidates. One popular theory was WIMPs — Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. These theoretical particles could have mass and exert gravity, yet remain undetectable because they barely interact with ordinary matter. Deep underground labs were built with sensitive detectors waiting to catch a WIMP colliding with an atom. But decades have passed, and no clear signal has emerged. Supersymmetry offered another tantalizing idea — every known particle might have a heavier 'partner.' One such partner, the neutralino, seemed perfect for dark matter. Yet even after firing up the Large Hadron Collider, these hypothetical particles have never shown up. Now, physicists are widening the search. Some suspect dark matter might be made of ultra-light particles like axions, or that it resides in a hidden "dark sector" with its own rules and forces. Others are daring to rethink gravity itself — perhaps we don't need dark matter, just a new understanding of how gravity works. A Mystery That Could Rewrite Physics The stakes are massive. Cracking the dark matter code could transform our understanding of matter, forces, and the very origins of the universe. It could lead us to a new physics — one that goes beyond the Standard Model that currently explains everything from atoms to quarks. But for now, we remain in the dark. Dark matter doesn't shine, collide, or leave trails. All we know is that it's out there — shaping galaxies, pulling clusters together, and silently sculpting the universe. Until we find it, the cosmos will remain a place of wonder and unfinished questions — where the most powerful force holding everything together remains hidden in plain sight.
Hans India
15-06-2025
- Hans India
Mysterious particle pierces earth, hinting at possible first direct dark matter detection
In February 2023, an underwater telescope anchored deep in the Mediterranean Sea—known as KM3NeT—recorded the brightest particle event ever seen. A stunning flash of light pierced through the detector's sensor network, revealing an object carrying a staggering 220 peta-electronvolts (PeV) of energy—nearly 100 times more powerful than anything produced by the Large Hadron Collider. Initially believed to be an ultra-energetic neutrino, this high-energy particle earned the nickname 'impossible muon' because of how unusually bright it was—35 times brighter than any prior detection. But soon, scientists hit a snag: its cousin observatory, IceCube in Antarctica—larger and operational for over a decade—had no record of a similar event, even though it had clear access to the same region of the sky. This anomaly led researchers to entertain a revolutionary idea: the flash could be humanity's first direct evidence of dark matter—the mysterious, invisible material believed to make up five times more mass than ordinary matter in the universe. Their theory suggests that the particle may have originated from a blazar—a galaxy with a supermassive black hole ejecting high-speed jets of particles. If those jets contain dark matter particles, they could survive billion-year journeys through space. The particle that struck KM3NeT came from a direction populated by known blazars, lending weight to the hypothesis. As the beam traveled sideways through Earth, it pierced 93 miles (150 km) of rock before reaching KM3NeT. Scientists theorize that during this underground trek, a dark matter particle might have collided with a nucleus, briefly becoming an 'excited' state that quickly decayed into two tightly aligned muons. KM3NeT's detectors, unable to distinguish the twin paths, saw a single blazing track. In contrast, IceCube—due to its South Pole location—would have seen the particle pass through only 9 miles (15 km) of crust. With less matter in its path, a collision (and thus detection) was far less likely. Not all physicists are convinced. Some argue the simplest explanation is still a record-breaking neutrino. Others, like Shirley Li of UC Irvine, note that while the dark matter model predicts a pair of overlapping muons, current instruments can't resolve such fine detail at these extreme energies—yet. Regardless of the outcome, the discovery has reignited the global pursuit to uncover what dark matter is made of. As KM3NeT expands and IceCube undergoes planned upgrades, scientists will continue watching the skies—and seas—for answers. Whether this was a neutrino anomaly or the long-sought dark matter breakthrough, one underwater flash may have just opened a new chapter in modern physics.
