Can protons be added to an atom to create heavier elements like gold, or are they only created in supernovae?

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Can protons be added to an atom to create heavier elements like gold, or are they only created in supernovae?

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Yes! They use particle accelerators to do it. It turns out that if you smash nuclei together with enough energy (but not too much), they’ll stick together and form new elements. It is, indeed, called “transmutation,” that elusive procedure the alchemists were looking for. In fact, doing so is how they discovered some of the heavier elements that are too radioactive to exist naturally. However, outside of scientific research, there’s no good reason to do it — it costs so much to run the particle accelerators, and they make such a tiny amount, that it’s really not worth it.

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