Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Synthesis of Gold

ringo - 16-6-2004 at 06:56

Up to this point in time has gold been successfully synthesized yet? I know that was a huge motivator of alchemists of old.

The_Davster - 16-6-2004 at 07:05

Isotopes of gold have been sucessfully made by nuclear transmutation but no chemical method has been found.

axehandle - 16-6-2004 at 07:14

Mentionable is also, I think, that Au produced with transmutation is considerably more expensive than the mined variant. Particle accelerators don't come cheap or use little power... :)

sanity gone - 16-6-2004 at 08:36

alchemy of old was based on the principal "he who can make gold owns the world." I don't believe gold has been created in a lab, but I have heard of obtaining gold from antimony sulphide, although I don't believe it really. Here's a link

axehandle - 16-6-2004 at 09:00

I'm 100% sure Au has been produced in a lab, several times, through transmutation. Specifically by bombarding an element which I think was some isotope of Pb with neutrons.

sanity gone - 16-6-2004 at 10:08

I was sure silver was made through transmutation, but I didn't know about gold; I stand corrected I guess.

axehandle - 16-6-2004 at 10:23

Here is just one article about it, it was done for the first time in 1980 it seems:
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalchemistry/a/aa050601a.h...

Organikum - 16-6-2004 at 13:48

Yes I made some gold last weekend by accident. I wanted to make an GOLEM again but I fucked something up with the amounts of philosophers stone added, or perhaps the stone was not good anymore. So I got just a mini-GOLEM and some gold.

I was very pissed as GOLEMS - if they are big - are quite useful but gold is just nothing, too weak and soft.

Somebody got an idea how to make platinium though?

Transmogrification

kryss - 16-6-2004 at 14:38

All gold, all elements after Iron are produced by nucleosynthesis!

SUPERNOVAE!!

darkflame89 - 17-6-2004 at 02:18

Correct, all nuclei after iron-56 cannot be formed by nuclear fusion. In fact such such nuclei are formed through nuclear fission. Some scienntists are postulating that the reason why Earth contained such heavy nuclei after iron is due to our solar system being formed form the remnants of an old supernova..

FrankRizzo - 18-6-2004 at 13:50

sanity gone,

I'd be willing to bet good money that the gentleman in that article that you linked to had created iron sulfide ("fools' gold";) and not actual gold. The fact that he was using antimony sulphide seems to agree with this.

Esplosivo - 19-6-2004 at 03:36

FrankRizzo I doubt the iron sulphide has anything to do since he treated the mixture with strong acids, such as nitric and hydrochloric acid. The sulphide would decompose. I would fine most probable that the alchemist has extracted real gold but from impure substances. Impurities of the gold were probably extracted from the mixture by some complicated extraction techniques.
Quote:

0.476 grains of gold per 10 grams of silver employed


As you can note the quantity of gold formed is somewhat small. It could be an impurity of the silver. Actually many metals, included 'raw' metals such as copper etc... have gold in them. During purification of these metals Au, Pt etc... are collected.

Artificial Gold from Silver

al - 18-10-2005 at 05:36

It exists several ways to produce artificial gold. The yield is low, but the interesting point is the feasibility of low energy nuclear transmutation.

- A process given by Roberto Monti
Mercury obtained from cinabar (HgS)
is put with aceti acid during months.
If you attack mercury with nitric acid, you will get a deposit of gold.
Pictures I made are here :
http://albert.cau.free.fr/English/Critical.html

If you do not want to spend too much nitric acid, distillate 90% of the mercury (but distillation of mercuy is dangerous)

- Transmutation of silver

I found the method in an old book (1650)
Melt the pure silver (negative gold test )
and drop it in a calcium hydroxyde milk.
Repeat the process several times.
As I observed, you may get golden silver the second run.
Attack the silver with nitric acid, separate the insoluble and attack it with agua regia (HNO3 + HCl), extract the gold using paper chromatography, ethyl acetate as eluent, and use the appropriate reagent to detect gold : SnCl2, ... I use p-dimethylbenzylydenerhodanine : it gives a violet stain at the front of the solvent.
You get the picture at my site :
http://albert.cau.free.fr/French/opinion.html

Important fatc is that you get better result if you you use around 100 g of silver. The last analysis has been made on 500 g of silver mixed with copper (I used copper to decrease the content of silver of the metal submitted to transmutation), all the residues of silver have been melted, then analyzed. The insoluble in nitric acid is black, important, ... it contains an appreciable concentration of gold. ... As soon as I get a RX equipment for analysis, I will analyse the black deposit for other elements.
Silver from the filtrate is separate with copper wires.

It exists others ways to produce gold but, from a scientific point of view, both described methods appear very relevant of the feasibility of low energy nuclear reactions.

I suggest one thing : Do the experiment with silver, then compare your result with other amateur scientists...

kazaa81 - 18-10-2005 at 12:29

I think that mercury, because of its atomic mass near Au, could be used for a nuclear reaction to make gold...

Even if mercury is expensive, you would re-gain what you've spent.

Mr. Wizard - 18-10-2005 at 12:39

Quote:
Originally posted by darkflame89
Correct, all nuclei after iron-56 cannot be formed by nuclear fusion. In fact such such nuclei are formed through nuclear fission. Some scienntists are postulating that the reason why Earth contained such heavy nuclei after iron is due to our solar system being formed form the remnants of an old supernova..

You have it half right. All elements after Iron 56 can be formed by fusion but without the release of energy, but they can be formed by fusion by adding energy. So you are right about the heavier elements being formed in supernovae, but they ARE formed by fusion, just not giving out energy, which is why the stars goes supernova in the first place.

unionised - 18-10-2005 at 12:41

"Even if mercury is expensive, you would re-gain what you've spent."

No. You wouldn't

IrC - 18-10-2005 at 13:54

IIRC I remember learning in school in the 50's that Hg was the first element turned into gold in a reactor, but the energy cost is so great it is not worth it. If there was an alchemical way to make gold from cheap metals like lead then the quack sites out there would not be trying to gain your money they would be busy making their own money.

somewhat on topic, somewhat off

stygian - 19-10-2005 at 06:01

anybody ever read about ORME (orbitally rearranged monoatomic elements)? Supposedly, the gold alchemists were trying to get was gold containing no metallic bonding. Plenty of info on the net, some of it sounds feasible, some of it, who knows.

12AX7 - 19-10-2005 at 08:33

Quote:
Originally posted by stygian
anybody ever read about ORME (orbitally rearranged monoatomic elements)? Supposedly, the gold alchemists were trying to get was gold containing no metallic bonding. Plenty of info on the net, some of it sounds feasible, some of it, who knows.


Actually it's remarkably hard to find any information seperate from David Hudson. What little I've researched it hasn't really found anything useful...

Tim

Quibbler - 20-10-2005 at 03:52

I'm pretty sure (but correct me if i'm wrong) that elements beyond 56Fe can be formed by fusion. Every nuclear particle added to 56Fe contributes more than 8MeV to the binding energy so whats not to work. Even fusing heavier elements should work
7Li + 56Fe --> 63Cu
40 MeV + 500 MeV ---> 560 MeV

neutrino - 20-10-2005 at 09:06

Heavy elements <i>can</i> be formed by nuclear fusion, the point of the above posts was that this can't really happen in a star because energy is not released and a star that contains mainly iron cannot continue fusion. Supernovae are the only things that can produce these elements in large quantities.