Alchemy

Is it possible to turn lead to gold?

Yes

"There is an earlier report (1972) in which Soviet physicists at a nuclear research facility near Lake Baikal in Siberia accidentally discovered a reaction for turning lead into gold when they found the lead shielding of an experimental reactor had changed to gold." *

"Unfortunately such gold is likely to be radioactive, and would decay back to stable lead, whilst releasing dangerous radiation." **

How are elements formed in nature?

"In nature, new elements are created by adding protons and neutrons to hydrogen atoms within the nuclear reactor of a star, producing increasingly heavier elements, up to iron (atomic number 26). This process is called nucleosynthesis. Elements heavier than iron are formed in the stellar explosion of a supernova. In a supernova gold may be made into lead, but not the other way around." *

How can you form stable gold from other elements?

"Using the LBNL’s Bevalac particle accelerator, Morrissey and his colleagues boosted beams of carbon and neon nuclei nearly to light speed and then slammed them into foils of bismuth. When a high-speed nucleus in the beam collided with a bismuth atom, it sheared off part of the bismuth nucleus, leaving a slightly diminished atom behind. By sifting through the particulate wreckage, the team found a number of transmuted atoms in which four protons had been removed from a bismuth atom to produce gold. Along with the four protons, the collision-induced reactions had removed anywhere from six to 15 neutrons, producing a range of gold isotopes from gold 190 (79 protons and 111 neutrons) to gold 199 (79 protons, 120 neutrons), the researchers reported in the March 1981 issue of Physical Review C." ***

The Transmutation

It is a three page paper. Fairly short. I think the researchers just made up some plausible scientific merits to justify the experiment. I mean, when you've won funding to turn bismuth into gold does anything else really matter?

PhysRevC.23.1044

"The variation of the production of gold isotopes from three RHI reactions with 209 Bismuth. In these experiments bismuth metal foils surrounded with Mylar catchers were irradiated with beams of 4.8 GeV (0.40 GeV / nucleon) 12 C, 8.0 GeV (0.40 GeV / nucleon) 20 Ne, and 25.2 GeV (2.1 GeV / nucleon) 12 C ions from the LBL Bevalac facility."

 

Chemistry lab reactions won't work. To change a heavy atom like lead Pb 82 into a lighter atom, gold Au 79, you need to irradiate with high energy particle beams to remove protons from the nucleus!

"The induced radioactivities were measured by gamma ray spectroscopy of the target foils and chemically separated gold fractions. These measurements were made on the sample at regular intervals over a period of from 30 min to one year after irradiation."

That gold is cursed! The process of removing protons makes the gold radioactive.

source:
*  http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalchemistry/a/aa050601a.htm
** http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/webprojects2002/crabb/modern.html
*** http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-lead-can-be-turned-into-gold/