I've been reading about something that many of us probably overlook: how scientists are actually trying to create gold in the laboratory. It's not science fiction; it's pure nuclear physics.

First, let's clarify what gold is. It's not a molecule like water. It's a simple chemical element: Au. A nucleus with 79 protons surrounded by electrons. That's it. Natural gold that exists is almost all gold-197 (¹⁹⁷Au): 79 protons, 118 neutrons, 79 electrons. Stable, non-radioactive.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. If you want to make gold in a laboratory, you can't use chemistry. Acids, furnaces, electrolysis... none of that works. You need nuclear transmutation. You need to change the nucleus of another element.

The most practical method scientists have found is to use mercury. Mercury has 80 protons. If you bombard mercury-198 with highly energetic neutrons (the neutrons of gold, say), you eject a neutron and get mercury-197. Here’s the crucial part: that mercury-197 is unstable. It naturally decays into gold-197 within days. And that is real gold, not an imitation.

What happened with the Chinese laboratories recently was different. They bombarded copper with argon plasma. What they obtained was nanometric copper with a surface electronic structure that behaves like gold in chemical reactions. But it was still copper. 29 protons, not 79. It’s a catalyst that looks like gold, not real gold.

What’s fascinating is what’s happening now in the world of controlled nuclear fusion. Some startups are seriously talking about incorporating a layer of mercury-198 inside the fusion reactor. The fast neutrons produced by the deuterium-tritium reaction (—those 14 MeV neutrons from fusion)—would hit the mercury, produce gold-197, and potentially you could extract kilograms or tons of gold per year as a byproduct.

But here are the real problems. First, you need a fusion reactor that actually works and produces a neutron flux strong enough. That’s what the entire world has been trying to achieve for decades. Second, the gold that comes out of the reactor is slightly radioactive due to neutron exposure. You have to store it for 14 to 18 years before it’s safe to sell as jewelry. Third, it’s brutally expensive. This isn’t a laboratory experiment; it’s nuclear-level energy technology.

The equation is simple: to make gold, you need a nucleus with exactly 79 protons and 118 neutrons. That’s ¹⁹⁷Au. If you don’t have that, it’s not gold; it’s just something that behaves like gold.

What intrigues me is the economic side. If someday these fusion reactors start producing tons of real laboratory gold, what happens to the global price? What about the gold reserves of central banks? Because we would shift from a world where gold is scarce to a world where it can potentially be manufactured. That’s not just science; that’s global money geopolitics.