NEWS 09 May 2025 Colliding beams of lead create fast-moving, short-lived gold ions. Understanding the process could help to refine particle accelerator experiments. You have full access to this article via your institution. LHC experiments don’t create large gold nuggets — but some particles within a beam of lead ions can turn into gold for about a microsecond.Credit: Zen Rial/GettyThe dream of seventeenth-century alchemists has been realized by physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), who...