Money, money, money… must be funny… in a nuclear physics world!

You know the main difference between chemistry and nuclear physics? It’s that nuclear reactions are about a hundred thousand times more powerful than any dull, grey chemical hydrate could ever dream to be. And while medieval alchemists were busy boiling rat urine to make gold, nuclear physicists scribbled down the formula for beta decay: n → p + e⁻ + v⁻ Here’s the gist: n is a neutron that used to mind its own business, and p is what it becomes after experiencing the spiritual awakening of beta decay. Sounds insane? But from a nuclear point of view, you can technically turn oxygen into nitrogen, arsenic into germanium — even mercury into gold. And that’s where we stop… and start nuclear-financing some money. If you can turn mercury into gold, why isn’t anyone doing it? I mean, imagine the business! Actually — they already tried. Back in 1941, at the University of California, scientists did make gold from mercury. There’s just one tiny problem: the experiment cost around a hundred thousand dollars… and produced a few atoms of gold. Do the math — that’s about $100,000,000,000 per gram. Not exactly cost-efficient. You’d think it’s simple — just zap some mercury with beta radiation and enjoy your golden life, right? Well… not quite. First of all, you can pour regular mercury right back into your thermometer. To make gold, you need an unstable isotope — because stable ones don’t decay. So, you have to knock mercury out of its nuclear balance, make it radioactive, and for that, you’ll need to bombard it with neutrons. Once you get Mercury-196, you can move on to phase two. Now we need a positive beta decay — because that reduces the number of protons in the nucleus(For the record, negative beta decay does the opposite, it adds protons.) At this point, you’ll want to grab a calculator — because to “zap” mercury-196 with a positive beta decay, you’ll have to load it into a particle accelerator. A particle accelerator — or more precisely, a cyclotron. It’s a glorious metal booth where particles spin in a spiral, pushed by a magnetic field, gaining speed and energy until — bam! — the scientists unleash the beta beam and fire. Sounds epic? In practice, it’s bureaucratic hell — and getting a license to use a cyclotron for “alchemy purposes” is a whole new level of boring. And then there’s the power bill. Cyclotrons eat electricity like monsters. You’re looking at hundreds, maybe thousands of kilowatts. Add the beam energy on top — and voilà, your one gram of gold now costs a hundred billion dollars. Oh, and by the way — the gold you get is radioactive for a few hours, maybe a day. Not all mercury atoms transform; some remain stubbornly moral. The result? A glowing, unstable, gold-mercury hybrid worth as much as a galaxy — and just as impractical. As the band Tsvyakhy once sang in their song “Alchemy”: I proclaim to the world: LONG LIVE NUCLEAR POWER! I stand on the edge with an angel and a demon… https://youtu.be/Ev-BYCQynR4