February 3, 2026 | 07:41 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Rumors are circulating on social media claiming that laboratories in China have been able to create the precious metal gold. These rumors refer to it as synthetic gold, but the truth has not been confirmed.
The circulating rumors include the idea that we only know of gold being made through nuclear reactions. This note is based on research conducted by a team from the Radiation Laboratory, the Physics Department, and the Chemistry Department at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States in 1941.
The process involves bombarding mercury atoms with neutrons generated by the Harvard cyclotron particle accelerator through a series of nuclear reactions. "You can create gold in a lab. All you need is a nuclear reaction, a particle accelerator, or the blast of a supernova," reads a statement quoted from an article published by IFLSCIENCE on July 9, 2025.
This information illustrates that gold can be created from other metallic elements, but the process is very expensive, making it impractical to sell self-made gold. Not to mention, synthetic precious metal is radioactive and not commercially viable.
Geologically, most gold on Earth comes from outer space. When massive stars explode (supernova) or neutron stars collide, they release immense energy, combining lighter elements into heavy metals such as gold. They are scattered throughout the universe, trapped in the process of the Earth's formation, and later discovered by miners.
Modern technology allows all these effects to be simulated in a laboratory, enabling scientists to create gold from other elements. However, as mentioned above, the enormous amount of energy required makes the process ineffective and dangerous.
Can Gold Really Be Made?
All the elements in the world are made up of atoms. All atoms are composed of an atomic nucleus, containing protons and neutrons, and an electron cloud or bond.
Because most of the chemical and physical properties of atoms are determined by the number and shape of their electron bonds, and the number and shape of electron bonds are determined by the number of protons in the atomic nucleus, it means the properties of an atom are very much determined by the number of protons. All atoms with the same number of protons in their nucleus behave identically. Therefore, they are classified by the same name as a chemical element.
The name of the chemical element gold refers to atoms that have 79 protons in their atomic nucleus. Thus, in principle, we can create gold by arranging 79 protons (and a sufficient number of neutrons to make the atomic nucleus stable). Or more than that, we can remove one proton from mercury (with 80 protons) or add one proton to platinum (with 78 protons) to create gold.
Physicist Christopher S. Baird mentioned in an article on wtamu.edu dated May 2, 2014, that the principle is easy in theory but difficult in practice. "Adding or removing protons from a nucleus are types of nuclear reactions," he said.
On the other hand, there is no chemical reaction that can create precious metals. "Chemical reactions change the number and shape of the electrons in an atom but leave the nucleus of the atom unchanged," Baird said.
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