Did you know that the alchemists' dream of making lead from base elements has been fulfilled? Nuclear chemists in the twentieth century, like the famous Glenn Seaborg (Seaborgium, Element 106 was named after him), have been able to grant the alchemists' wish, although it is arguable if the accomplishment is the fulfillment of a dream or a frustrated end to a long search.
Did you know that the alchemists' dream of making lead from base elements has been fulfilled? Nuclear chemists in the twentieth century, like the famous Glenn Seaborg (Seaborgium, Element 106 was named after him), have been able to grant the alchemists' wish, although it is arguable if the accomplishment is the fulfillment of a dream or a frustrated end to a long search.
While different methods have been tried throughout the ages to transmutate baser elements into gold, the trick lies in understanding that the change cannot occur through chemical means - that is, through the rearrangement of electrons. When Alchemist Hennig Brand was searching for gold in the 1600s by evaporating mass quanitites of urine, he was simply causing simple physical and chemical changes to occur. (Brand actually isolated phosphorus which glows when its vapors come in contact with the air. Cool, but no gold.)
If lead is to be made into gold, upheaval must come at a more significant level than the tranferring of electrons allows. A fundamental change in the nucleus of the lead atom must occur to transform it into a gold atom. Specifically, the atom of lead must lose three protons. This is not as easy as it sounds because the nucleus is held together with a strong force (creatively called the nuclear strong force). It turns out that the cost of the energy required to kick three protons out of a lead nucleus to make a gold nucleus is so great that you are far better off mining gold from a streambed than collecting gold atoms at some cyclotron laboratory.
Anyhow, I was reflecting upon the aim of the alchemist, as I recently encountered a little-known poem, The Alchemist by Patricia St. John. It was a beautiful sketch of God's work in our lives as a Master Alchemist. How well the analogy carries! The change that is produced as we are transformed from glory to glory, from carnal to spiritual creatures, and from base vessels to glorious vessels, is not a simple change that can be accomplished at some low-energy external level. The change is fundamentally inward, accomplished in our deepest, densest parts.
So here's to the Master Alchemist, who, as costly as it may be, doesn't abandon His process of transmutation! Thank goodness!
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