It is said that Alchemy is a little genesis. Frank Wilczek, Nobel Prize 2004, reports on a gold ions collision that does not sound incredible for alchemists.
The properties of gold are always astonishing. From Dialogues on Science, interview with Frank Wilczek Roma, 2007: “On the left an image of traces of particle produced by the collision of two high-energy ions of gold. The fireball that results and its subsequent expansion recreate, on a small scale and for a short time, the physical conditions of the Big Bang.
… The early universe was simple. In 1972 the universe was obscure to us. Under very high temperatures, as after the singularity of the Big Bang, there must be many hadrons and anti-hadrons, each acting as an extended entity that strongly interacted, in a complicated way, with their neighbors. Then, these entities began to overlap each other, producing a theoretically not disentangling interweaving.
But the asymptotic freedom makes the very high temperatures for theorists to become friendly. It teaches us that if we move from a description based on hadrons to one based on quarks and hadrons, and we focus on quantity – as the total energy – that is not sensitive to the mild radiation, then treating the strong interaction, so difficult in general, becomes simple. We can perform calculations in the first approximation, assuming that quarks, antiquarks, and gluons behave as free particles, then add the effects of the rare challenging interactions. This makes it practical to formulate a detailed description of the matter properties at very high temperatures, which are essential in cosmology.”
To a minimal volume of space and time, we can even reproduce the conditions of the Big Bang in our laboratories. When heavy ions are made to collide at high energies, they produce a fireball that, for a very short time, reaches temperatures up to 200 MeV; simple may not be the adjective we would use in describing the explosive outcome of this event, reproduced in the image on the top, but in fact, detailed studies allow us to reconstruct aspects of the initial fireball and confirm that it was a plasma of quarks and gluons … “
Very hardly quarks and gluons are alchemist’s fields. As very hard, we can handle high-energy particles. But indeed, we can consciously have something to do with ions of gold, as we can theoretically dissipate it so effectively in our perfect black and then raise it in a bright and plasmatic white.
For an alchemist, fractionating into ions of a metal does not require a particle accelerator in which the particles are pulled to collide. Often, our magnetization proceedings, a dispersion with Alcahest, and the repeated operations to achieve the Alcahest can produce ionized matter. And should produce it. Even if not high energy, though. Using energies as strong as those used in modern physics might be wiser and scholarly, limited to milder targeted energies.
The bright light in the gold used in Alchemy is not incredible for those who have tried to reach the Mercurius/Alcahest directly from calcined metallic gold (1).