Forget turning straw into gold—CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is out here turning lead into gold, and it’s giving medieval alchemists a serious case of FOMO! Scientists at the 17-mile-long particle smasher pulled off a nano-second of alchemy, creating a smidge of gold in a “near-miss” collision. No Philosopher’s Stone needed, just some protons, photons, and a whole lot of speed. While the gold vanishes faster than your Wi-Fi during a storm, this experiment is unlocking secrets of the universe’s early days. Who knew particle physics could be so… magical?
