A startup energy company, called Marathon Fusion, may soon be living out the dream of alchemists from the Middle Ages. In a recently released paper posted to the arXiv preprint server, the company outlines a method to turn an isotope of mercury, 198Hg, into 197Au, the most stable form of gold.
An interesting simulation. I’d imagine there are a handful of elements that are much easier to do this with without gold being the final destination and are therefore less appealing to the headline machine.