/sci/ - Science & Math

We can synthesize gold. Who told you that you couldn't? The problem is that the cost of the energy required to fuse lighter nuclei into gold is more expensive than the gold you produce.

We can make Diamonds because it's just made out of Carbon, a cheap and plentiful resource. We can change plastic into oil because plastic is made out of oil. WTF does blending steel mean?

We CAN'T make gold because it's an ELEMENT and making an element is REALLY FUCKING HARD. Do you have any idea how hard it is to just... put more protons into an atom? It's not easy. While it CAN be done it costs much more than gold has ever been worth.

Also america already has a shit ton of gold anyway.

we can make gold. it is possible but difficult.

making gold requires changing one element to another. actually changing the nucleus of an atom. it is a nuclear reaction.

none of your other examples require this.

so you take mercury and bombard it with either gamma rays or neutrons. result is gold.

we can, it's just fucking expensive

the process of creating gold is very different from the examples you pulled, one needs to hammer at different atoms in a particle accelerator, not very cost-effective.

>>3258510
Why can't we spend 10,000,000,000 dollars (less than iraq war) to develop a cheap way to do this (in secret, I hope you read this DHS and steal my idea and save the USA)?

Sure it's difficult because of what you guys said, but with human enginuity surely we could find a way to make more gold than the cost of the gold. We just need to make a shitload at once.

Gov if this shit works you better give me a cush job to live the rest of my life off of.

>>3258508
He may be referring to friction-stir welding developed by Airbus a few years ago. Its a solid-state joining process; the metal is never required to melt, but fuses the base metals in a manner superficially similar to welding. Its used primarily when you don't want to degrade the metal's heat treatment with high temperatures, and is used most often on aluminium.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCe8-QYKZf4

>>3258501

In 1986, Richard Helderpson discovered a form of radiation emitted from the brains of a significant minority of people, which he found blocked his attempts to transmute objects to gold when the process was successfully carried out on a satellite far from any sources.

Clearly, the cost of transporting material into orbit is far too high for this to be an economically viable operation, so Helderpson attempted to carry out the process on remote islands.

Unfortunately, this "derping radiation" is present in high enough concentrations to prevent transmutation anywhere on the earth's surface.

Well it doesn't really have to be that hard, if you have a geothermal energy plant you can collect gold. You basically stick a big pot down the drilled whole with water in it or something and you can collect a bit of gold from the earth. However the yield is not enough to compensate for shutting down the whole damn plant, even overnight. So it's not that we can't its just that there is no efficient way of doing it and even if America had millions of tons of gold it wouldn't be able to sell it quickly enough to repay all its debts before gold becomes worthless.

>>3258522
why bother when for 10 billion we could by so much candy we could save the usa by giving china candy so it would be our best friend forever.

>>3258522
re-read the thread

you need a fucking particle accelerator
you know how much those cost?
not just to build, but maintain and run, a shitload.
no amount of gold could make it up.

>>3258522

Finding out how nature 'creates' gold will give you some idea of why it is not very feasible.

>>3258522
The amount of energy required will always be huge.

>>3258501
Diamond => allotrope
Steel => alloy
Plastic => polymer
Gold => ELEMENT

>>3258532
clever

>>3258522
A cheap method for transmutation would have a hell of a lot more uses than making gold.

>>3258501
>Make gold pay off our debts.

The U.S. monetary system is not gold backed any more.

Perhaps you should learn some basic economic theory while you are at asking why not make gold.

The U.S. economy is entirely debt derived. That being,t he more debt = the more value our currency is worth.

We began to phase out the gold standard in the 30s and completed it in the 70s.

Our money is essentially worthless.

Thus, if we pay off our debt, we have no currency system anyways. So it would be pointless to pay off a debt if that very debt is what keeps our economic system alive.

Though one could also say that since Debt equals our GDP right now, our GDP thus backs the currency. Which is what it is supposed to be like in the first place.


(Don't point out to me how irrational this it I am already aware of that)

>>3258537
Fun fact about particle accelerators: the vast majority of their opperating costs are employing hundreds to thousands of engineers, technicians, and scientists to keep them running. The electrical and parts costs are minor.

>>3258556
some particle accelerators are as big as my fist

anyway, you can do this shit in a nuclear reactor

>>3258550
The monetary system is based off of private debt though, not public debt; a visa currency is backed by the assets of the government of issue, not its liabilities. Those assets, through debt held by the central bank, eventually trace themselves to the mortgages of the nation. Not the stupid deficits the US is running to pay for its military.

Furthermore, I'd like to point out that gold has no more or less intrinsic value than the piece of paper that makes up a dollar note; value and worth are artificial constructs which we have applied to objects, albeit based of a rather sophisticated set of values. Regardless, visa currency is of exactly the same value as the gold it once represented. If people are willing to trade it for food, water, shelter, then it has worth, regardless of any notion of 'intrinsic value'.

>>3258537
I thought gold could be made in a nuclear reactor too? But it was radioactive so not very useful.

>>3258563
I was clearly talking about the large ones such as CERN and Fermilab. But you can argue semantics if you like.

>>3258531
Jesus Christ thats cool

>>3258571
>thinks his error is just semantics.

hahahaha

>>3258578
If you disagree, I implore you to share your view.

>>3258583
i did share my view. you just no true scotsmanned.

>>3258591
Your view was that particle accelerators are both large and small. My response was that I was clearly only referring to the larger variety, and that your only argument was on the class of apparatus described by 'particle accelerator'. Thus, as your argument was based solely on the definition of a word, it was a semantic argument.

Is this untrue?

>>3258568

I think you missed the point of my comment mate,
I agree wtih you on a few later points (about it being a construct we ourselves have made etc) and will have to discuss it later, the entire point I was trying to make is that you could make all the gold you want but it won't actually solve anything.

Nevermind the fact that the price of gold (thus its' intrinsic value) is still decided by its perceived demand and the full supply.
I.E= flood a market, crash a supplys worth.

Anyways, Because a large variety of people own the notes, bills, and bonds in the "public" portion of the debt, the U.S. Treasury also publishes information, that groups the types of holders by general categories to portray who owns United States debt. In this data set, some of the public portion is moved and combined with the total government portion, because this amount is owned by the Federal Reserve as part of United States monetary policy.
This point makes a few assumptions which should have been a given:
1. Whether or not gold actually has a real value or not.
2. The backing of the dollar,
3. Ramifications concerning flooding a market with a now mass producible object.
4. The fact that this wouldn't solve anything.

>>3258568
Also, save the argument and rebuttal for some other time. my post fell below the troll line. Which means by default I am apparently trolling lawl.

>>3258543
The sooner man gets a cheap and effective command over elemental nature the better, I say.

Other nations have particle accelerators. The USA has particle accelerators (smaller than the big one).

We were going to build one in Houston I hear anyway, but didn't, maybe we secretly did and are making gold?

We need to find a cheap way to do this shit, you pussies need to stop crying about how expensive it is, this should be our new goal as Americans, like the space race of old.

Total elemental control.

>>3258615
>is this untrue
yes. especially that part where you said "clearly"

you said A possesses quality B
i provided a counter example.
you said clearly i was talking about certain cases of A and then got all butthurt and kept posting about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

>>3258623
I wasn't the guy you were responding to; I got your point. I just saw some errors that seemed quite glaring to me.

>>3258623
This is why we wouldn't tell anyone until after we paid our debts, immediately ruining the value of gold but leaving the USA debt free.

>>3258651
>>3258652
Shh! we crossed the troll line.

Truth be told, I just gleaned that from the books on economic theory (Which hurt my brain) a rundown in the U.S. debt (Which is backed by the dollar specifically (note legal tender public and private) but that does not deal with the defecit itself, but then the defecit only concerns gov spending etc blah blah long lecture on economic theory and how mortgages which are private fund to public companies (fed) go to government who owns the debt (public) to other countries, thereby being fiat etc)

tl;dr

American monetary policy sucks I am beyond the troll line and am dead.

>>3258644
Your 'counter example' is only valid outside of the context of my comment, which was in response to a post which had already augmented the definition of the word: he was discussing the vast cost associated with accelerators; he was clearly not referring to CRT monitors. Your response to me was based entirely on the most literal interpretation which had no bearing on the conversation whose scope was defined long previously.

>>3258569
>>3258563

reactors do not transmute elements in the way you relavent to OP's question.

they are used to catalyze or initiate specific nuclear reactions, which can be controlled by shielding or adding other, different materials with different radiation properties.

for example, Element A could give you element B or C (along with some other nuclide that I do not care about at the moment)... element B is produced spontaneously, but element C requires that you hit the nucleus with a neutron. Thus Element C would be favored if you put element A inside a big shielded drum under neutron flux from some OTHER neutron source.

alternatively, you could just let it sit there and produce element B.

BUT, at the end of the day, element B, C are both LIGHTER than element A (or, at best, they have the same AMU, different Z number, OR possibly Z+1 or maybe even Z+2, but those last two are extremely rare and difficult to achieve).

thus, you will never do: 1 kg of radioactive material A to 1 kg of gold

also, the cost of mining, refining, transporting, storing, and utilizing that radioactive material would need to be cheaper than the cost of taking a big slug of radioactive material containing daughter Gold, separating the daughter gold, and purifying it.

that is extremely unlikely. gold is pretty fucking heavy. There arent any materials that are simultaneously:

1) heavier than gold
2) significantly cheaper to mine/refine/transport/store/use than gold
3) radioactive.

>>3258666
you are easy to troll

is it aspergers, being 13 yrs old or butthurt that makes you keep arguing pointlessly on the internet?

>>3258666
except the accelerator required to transmute elements may fit in the hand.

rutherford did it with desktop equipment.

so his point isn't really outside the context of the discussion.

>>3258681
Or when you lose an argument do you just say you've been trolling?

>>3258666
except the accelerator required to transmute elements may fit in the hand.

rutherford did it with desktop equipment.

so his point isn't really outside the context of the discussion.

>>3258688
i'll let you have the last word on this

>>3258688
it certainly wasn't "semantics", which was what got you mad

>>3258689
That's fine. I never said otherwise. All I said was that the dominant expense related to large scientific instruments was payroll.

>>3258681

>>3258702
no, you claimed it was a semantic argument. which is clearly not true. it was a contextual argument.

>>3258702
clearly

>>3258703
>specious trolling was just being dumb claim

>>3258696
If it wasn't semantics, then what was it?

>>3258709
Semantics is in reference to the meaning of words. The meaning of words can change contextually. How are these mutually exclusive?

Insufficient quantities of nuclear geese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A2t%C3%A9_de_Foie_Gras_%28short_story%29

>>3258721
>>3258721
we both know what a particle accelerator means. we both agree they are both large and small. so we have no conflict in the definition. just over which category of particle accelerator was under discussion.

i would say this was a dispute over context.

>>3258741
Semantics are context-dependent.

>>3258730
a "semantic argument" is one over definition, apropos of meaning inferred by context.

if you say a semantic argument is actually an argument over meaning (even though semantics is the meaning of signifiers) then all arguments are semantic arguments.

Quantum entangle H with Mo^99.

Mo^99 decays to Tc^99

Entanglement also causes H to move up the table to He.

Repeat until you get Au.

>>3258746
semantios yes, but the word semantic is also context dependent, and when in the phrase "semantic argument" semantic means definition.

so hoisted by your own petard, much?

>>3258752
You could argue that.

gold is an element you retard

>>3258689


Excuse me, what did rutherford do with desktop equipment?

>>3258756
And definitions are context dependent

If we started shitting out gold, the value for it would go down.

economics

>>3258752
The funny part about this thread is earlier, you were convinced you were the one doing the trolling.

DARPA Chief Kenneth Baker, MGS.