With all our modern technology how come we cant synthesize Gold?

Question

With our vast knowledge of Chemistry and other sciences, how come we still can't synthesize Gold?

We can synthesize other substances like diamonds by pressurising carbon.

We know it's atomic structure how come we can't make it?

The old alchemists would be very disappointed!

Answer 1

This question, or variants of it, appear often.

Diamonds are a form of carbon. To make diamonds, they start with carbon, and by applying heat and pressure, they force the carbon atoms to stack up a bit different, but it's still carbon.

Gold is an element, like carbon.  It's remarkably versatile. You can pound it into a sheet so thin you can see through it. You can draw it into wires far thinner than a human hair.   It is remarkably resistant to corrosion.  You can alloy it with most metals.  It will react chemically with chlorine, fluorine, and cyanide. But it's still gold, or gold alloyed with something else, or gold chloride / fluoride / cyanide.

In order to change one element to another, you must make changes on an atomic particle level.  Specifically, you need to change the number of protons in the nucleus.

In an actual experiment, researchers used a particle accelerator and a platinum target to change a few atoms of platinum into gold isotope.  There are only 4 problems with this procedure:

1) Particle accelerators are very, very expensive.

2) Only a few atoms can be changed at a time.

3) Platinum is more expensive than gold.

4) The gold isotope is unstable, and turns to lead.

Grandpa

Answer 2

E=mc^2.  If you could synthesize gold, the amount of energy would cost millions of times more than digging it out of the ground.

Answer 3

Diamond is a form of carbon, so it can be made from carbon, Gold is only gold, However, gold can be synthesized from other atoms by banging them together in suitable collisions so that nuclei fuse. Unfortunately, it is horrendously costly to make the small amounts of gold obtained thereby.