Alchemy!

Isaac Newton could be called as one of the father of Modern Physics while Robert Boyle is Known as the father of modern chemistry!

But did you know that both of them also had one more similarity!?

They both believed that you can make gold from base metal!

Which means that they believe in Alchemy!

Many individuals like them, often at the forefront of scientific inquiry, dedicated significant time and effort to alchemical pursuits, seeking the philosopher’s stone for transmuting metals into gold and finding elixirs for medicine!

Basically though Alchemy was a proto-scientific and philosophical practice in ancient and medieval times, aiming to transmute base metals into gold, find a cure for all diseases (the elixir of life), and achieve immortality. It was a multifaceted field that combined experimental techniques with mystical and philosophical ideas about the cosmos, matter, and the human body!

Now you may think that it is absurd but actually in the quest of finding the  philosopher’s stone, Alchemists made significant contributions to early chemistry and pharmacology through their experiments and developed a range of laboratory methods, even though they never achieved their primary goals!

The central concept of Alchemy is The Philosopher’s Stone which is supposed to be a legendary substance believed to facilitate the transmutation of metals and cure diseases!

The specific practice of turning base metals, such as lead, into noble metals, especially gold is called Chrysopoeia. Then you have within alchemy the concept of Panacea and Elixir of Life which is the search for a universal medicine to cure all illnesses and a potion to prolong life indefinitely!

In the late 1960s, Judith Temperley, a physicist studied properties of various metals by bombarding them with high-energy neutron and in one experiment, the target metal was mercury, an element with 80 protons!

Under these conditions, a neutron enters the nucleus, which ultimately causes destruction of a proton by a process called “electron capture.” The result is an atom with only 79 protons, making it an atom of gold! So the alchemists were correct: A base metal can be turned into gold, but only with extreme patience!

Accumulate a penny’s worth of gold from mercury in this fashion, says Barry L. Berman, a physicist at George Washington University, will take about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years! Or if you invest in mutual funds for so many years then you can buy all the Gold you want!

Then again you could just have a rich life! Like Tanguturi Prakasham!

Now have a golden sleep!

Shubh ratri!