New Delhi, May 14 -- Medieval alchemists dreamt of turning lead into gold. At the Switzerland-based European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, scientists just did it, though not in a way that would fill a treasure chest.

Scientists observed lead atoms transforming into gold during high-speed near-collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider. While the gold existed for only a fraction of a second and in vanishingly small quantities, the experiment has offered a striking example of how extreme physics can change the identity of matter.

The research, published in Physical Review Journals by the ALICE collaboration, revealed that when lead nuclei raced past each other at nearly the speed of light inside the LHC, they genera...