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| Philosopher’s stone as pictured in Atalanta Fugiens Emblem 21 | Oldest golden artifacts in the world (4600–4200 BC) from Varna necropolis, Bulgaria — grave offerings on exposition in Varna Museum. |
The Ultimate Transmutation Machine
For centuries, people have valued gold. The oldest gold artifacts date back to the 5th millennium BC. People have long sought the magic of making this precious element.
What if one could convert lead into gold? The short answer is yes. Alas, the answer comes with a lot of gotchas. A second question follows: Would one want to?
More universally, what if one could transform any element into another element? Imagine turning nitrogen into platinum. Could future people make an ultimate transmutation machine? Would it be desirable? Let’s find out.
The Lure of the Philosopher’s Stone
Early chemists, also known as alchemists, tried to turn cheaper metals into gold, a process known as Chrysopoeia. These chemists were in search of ‘the philosopher’s stone,’ a magic substance for the purpose of converting something else into gold. Surprise, they never found it.
However, recent scientists have managed to make gold, but by spending much more than gold is worth. But, could a future society produce gold economically? And if it did so, what would this do to the value of gold?
Before answering these questions, we should consider how gold ended up in our universe in the first place.
Back to Basics, the Elements
Elements compose all matter in universe. They range from the hydrogen atoms produced shortly after the big bang, all the way to the most complex molecule ever made (so far). All molecules are made from the elements, and the elements are hydrogen (the lightest), helium, lithium, and so on … all the way up to oganesson, which is so far the heaviest element.
What? You’ve never heard of oganessson? Now you have.
Remember the periodic table? Of course you do. Reminds you of school, I bet.
In short, all elements are made from the stars. Remember the line from the Woodstock song, We are Stardust? Joni knew where we all came from. Hear the song here.
For the science about stars producing elements, click the link. For nucleosynthesis, neutron star mergers are source of producing gold.
Mining the Stuff
If nature already produces gold, why bother making it? Good question. If the universe has gold, space venturists could go out there and mine it. Right?
Billions of years later, gold from the stars ended up as deposits on Earth. For instance, an ancient asteroid (or asteroids) may have seeded the Witwatersrand basin in South Africa to become the richest gold deposits on Earth. For more refer to the Origin section on Wikipedia’s page about gold.
Perhaps one might find more gold deeper into the Earth’s interior. An enterprising futurist could drill deep into the Earth’s mantle to extract it. Or look for gold-bearing asteroids. In a space epic, the hero could visit the remains of merging neutron stars. Somewhere in that neighborhood, one might find gold-bearing asteroids. Perhaps.
Given the daunting task of making a go at interstellar mining, let’s consider the gold fabrication option.
Making Gold from other Atoms
So far, two laboratories have produced non-radioactive gold. Seaborg’s laboratory blasted the bismuth inside a particle accelerator. It did so by using carbon and neon nuclei to remove protons and neutrons from bismuth atoms.
A bismuth atom has 83 protons and the bismuth-209 isotope has 126 neutrons. The nucleus of the common stable gold-197 isotope has 79 protons and 118 neutrons.
CERN, the largest particle accelerator facility in the world, produced gold from lead. In an ALICE experiment, near-miss collisions between high-energy lead nuclei produced small amounts of gold nuclei.
Both of these methods utlized high energies and expensive facilities, and both only produced only miniscule amounts at very high expense. So, how is a sci-fi writer going to world-build an economic method of making gold?
A Universal Machine
One could conceive of a universal element maker, banging protons and neutrons together to form any element, including gold. The machine would also need to supply electrons for each atom in order to match the number of protons. But wait, there’s another possibility.
Use neutron capture followed by beta decay. In neutron capture, the electrically-neutral neutrons collide and bind with an atom’s nucleus to make the atom heavier. Eventually beta decay occurs, during which the atom emits beta radiation – and – a neutron transforms into a proton by switching a ‘down’ quark into an ‘up’ quark. Quarks are the basic constituents of matter, forming sub-atomic entities such as protons and neutrons.
Perhaps some exotic new technology would manipulate quarks more directly? I’ll let a physics guru answer. If this were possible, a machine could transform a neutron into a proton, or vice versa, by switching the appropriate quark.
Perhaps this machine would use photons to ‘manipulate’ the subject quark, such as by using gamma rays. It is hard to manipulate something smaller than an atom by using a component made of atoms. That would be harder than fixing a precision watch while wearing heavy gloves. Regardless, if some future means is found, the process will be highly energy intensive.
In theory, this all sounds good. Alas, any process would be highly radioactive and energy costly. Will any culture be capable of economically running such processes? Enter the highly-advanced civilization. Specifically, meet the Kardashev super civilization.
A Kardashev Super Civilization?
The Kardashev classification system labels civilizations in terms of how much energy a society utilizes. Within a few centuries, humanity might achieve a Type I level, whereby a societ harnesses all available energy on the home planet. But to achieve economic transmutation of elements, the civilization may need to achieve Type II at minimum. At Type II, the society utilizes the entire energy of its host star. In our case, use our Sun.
For Type III, the civilization utilizes the entire galaxy. Mind boggling.
Assuming such civilizations could exist, a future society may produce gold by utilizing the virtually-unlimited energy at its disposal. However, what would happen to the value of gold? It appears the real value for advanced civilizations should be based on energy, not gold.
Let’s look at why gold is valuable now, and why it might not be valuable in a future society.
The Future Value of Gold
Generally, gold is valuable because it is sufficiently rare while also being durable, beautiful and easily recognizable. Hence society has used gold as a basis for currency although changes have occurred.
Rareness is important for making something valuable. When was the last time you spent a fortune to purchase pepper to go along with your salt? If you have the resources to read this website, you probably don’t spend a lot of money on pepper. However, there was a time when pepper cost a fortune. Long ago, due to the difficulty of pepper cultivation plus its high demand, pepper had been a basis for currency.
How should currency be set? This is a loaded question leading to debate. Seeing how energy defines the advancement level for future civilizations, should there be an energy-based currency? As valued commodity, will gold become passé?
Afterword
King Midas suffered because turning everything into gold made it worse than worthless, making this material literally toxic. Consider the lesson.
Peter Spasov. Last updated Friday August 02, 2025
