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Routine maintenance discovers an estimated 4 tonnes of gold inside the Large Hadron Collider – Scientists left “perplexed”

Bullion.Directory precious metals news 1 April, 2015

By Alison Macdonald

Science Editor at Bullion.Directory

Maintenance teams working within the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, uncovered a coating of what appeared to be yellow paint last week, on the outermost concrete skin of the 27-kilometer long structure.

It has since been confirmed that this yellow paint is in fact a thin covering of gold, platinum and rare-earth elements.

LHC project head Dr Avril Blageur announced to her team this morning that a “10-micron (0.01mm) hazing of gold, platinum, scandium and yttrium has been found around the outermost protective barrier” adding “we are perplexed as to how this hazing has occurred and are currently establishing a timeframe for it’s deposit… by investigating past maintenance records for these structural elements”

The internal email continued “Maintenance teams were conducting a final sweep of the four particle detectors – ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb following the system failure… during the SUSY operation. As part of the sweep they lifted elements of the protective extra-dermal lead blanket and on discovering the golden coating, immediately alerted senior staff.”

“We have since lifted the blankets at 1km intervals around the outside and inside perimeters of the ring and found similar deposits, with 10 micron deposits to the outer and 2 micron deposits to the inner surfaces of the LHC.”

“Assuming a similar distribution around the 27km torus, deposits could amount to 4 tonnes, although removal of the metals would be impractical and not cost-effective”

The announcement was made to team members and leaked to the Swiss tabloid Blick by an unnamed source. The source alleged the coating was 89% pure gold, 10% platinum and 1% other elements, making the estimated 4 tonnes of the yellow metal the largest single discovery this decade.

At current prices, the CERN scientists are sitting on top of $230 million dollars worth of gold.

It has been confirmed that senior researchers at Swiss gold refiners PAMP / MKS Group have been at the CERN facility the past week although PAMP have so far refused to comment on the discovery.

The LHC first started up on 10 September 2008, and remains the latest addition to CERN’s accelerator complex. The LHC consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way.

Inside the accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide. The beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes – two tubes kept at ultrahigh vacuum. They are guided around the accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field maintained by superconducting electromagnets. The electromagnets are built from coils of special electric cable that operates in a superconducting state, efficiently conducting electricity without resistance or loss of energy. This requires chilling the magnets to ‑271.3°C – a temperature colder than outer space. For this reason, much of the accelerator is connected to a distribution system of liquid helium, which cools the magnets, as well as to other supply services.

Could this discovery herald the beginning of the end for traditional gold mining?

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