Scientists turn lead into gold – what does that mean for investors?

The first coin made of pure gold was introduced as official currency in 560 BC. In the centuries since, alchemists dreamed of producing gold, preferably from a cheap metal such as lead. Could this dream have become true? In early May 2025 – almost 2,600 years later – physicists at the European nuclear research centre CERN on the French-Swiss border succeeded in producing real gold from lead via particle accelerator. How did this transformation occur – and should investors be worried about the value of their gold investments?

Attempt to create quark-gluon plasma produces gold 

As part of the major experiment ALICE (short for ‘A Large Ion Collider Experiment’) in the Large Hedron Collider LHC, around 2,400 scientists and technicians are working on the creation and measurement of quark-gluon plasma, which was created by the Big Bang and put the universe into a state of extreme density and heat just for a few millionths of a second. To achieve this, lead nuclei are sent on a collision course in the particle accelerator. If the lead nuclei do not collide, but pass extremely close to one other, it can happen that three protons are removed by the intense magnetic field of the lead nuclei during irradiation in the LHC, thereby creating gold. The gold exists just as briefly as the primordial plasma generated by the scientists. 

A gold treasure that only exists for a split second

The lifespan of the gold created in the particle accelerator is so short that its existence can only be proven scientifically. Gold is in no danger of being produced in larger quantities this way – not to mention the costs it would involve. Incidentally, this was not the first time that gold has been produced artificially: Back in the 1950s, American nuclear scientists succeeded in creating gold by processing the metal bismuth in a particle accelerator. The production of gold by irradiating platinum or mercury in a nuclear reactor has also been possible for years. None of these scientific discoveries have, however, had any effect on the price of gold.