We can now convert mercury into gold and solved alchemy again. But what makes it different this time is that Marathon Fusion, the startup behind this development, says they could make hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold every year which is simply huge news considering that Gold is one of the most precious metals in the world.
So the process starts with taking the element that sits right next to gold on the periodic table, MERCURY. Now the thing about mercury is that it naturally has a lot of isotopes which makes it easier to move up or down the Periodic Table given some stress. They're basically atoms with the same number of protons, but different numbers of neutrons.
So Marathon Fusion took mercury 198, which has 80 protons, one more proton than gold, and 180 neutrons and placed it in something called a Deuterium Tritium or a DT fusion reactor. Now in that reactor, two heavy forms of hydrogen were fused together to create neutrons with very high energy.
These high energy neutrons then slam into mercury 198 atoms, knock out exactly one neutron from it and turn it into mercury 197. But here's the thing about mercury 197. It still has 80 protons. So it's still mercury, but now it's highly unstable.
It starts decaying naturally and in a process called electron capture, where one of its protons pulls in a nearby electron and fuses with it to become a neutron. And with this, the number of protons reduces from 80 to 79, effectively turning mercury into gold.
Now, its not like this is new as experiments like this have been done before. What's different this time is the sheer scale of it. Marathon Fusion estimates that a single fusion power plant could create 2 to 5 tons of gold per year, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
But of course, there are challenges. The new gold is radioactive. So it needs around 17 years to become completely safe. Plus, separating mercury-198 from natural mercury takes extra work. But what's important is that the physics is there. All that's left for debate is if it's economically worth it or not, but if history has taught us something that with time things will come economically feasible.