THE DREAM OF ALCHEMY: WHERE DO BASE METALS TRULY TURN INTO GOLD?

In the Harry Potter Universe, alchemy is a branch of magic. It’s an ancient science, which deals with the study of the four classical elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Magical alchemy also concerns itself with the transmutation of substances. So, it’s linked to chemistry, potion-making, and the magic of transformation. Dating back to antiquity, alchemy is fused with philosophy, and mixed up with metaphysical and mystical conjecture. Even in the 20th century, there were still some members of wizard kind who actively studied magical alchemy. And, should there have been sufficient demand, alchemy was taught at Hogwarts, to those sixth and seventh year students who chose it.

Magical alchemy makes its presence felt in subtle ways within the Harry Potter Universe. Ancient alchemical texts often mention the chemical colors of red and white. Some scholars think that, like the base metals of silver and gold, red and white represented two different aspects of human nature. And the colors were the motivation for the forenames of Rubeus (red) Hagrid, and Albus (white) Dumbledore. In our own universe, the study of alchemy has run a parallel path to its magical counterpart.

The goals of alchemy were the creation of an elixir of immortality; the synthesis of an alkahest, or universal solvent, and chrysopoeia—the transmutation of base metals into noble ones, particularly gold. There is little doubt that alchemy, practiced throughout Europe, Egypt, and Asia, played a major role in the creation of early modern science, and especially medicine and chemistry.

But perhaps what’s not so well known is the fact that contemporary scientists have realized the dream of chrysopoeia. For, somewhere in the unfeasibly huge cosmos, base metal elements are slowly being transformed into gold.

The Origin of the Classical Elements

Let’s look at the backstory of the elements. The Ancient Greeks, among others, believed that the Earth was made up of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Aristotle believed in a divine, but essentially dull and dormant cosmos. He imagined a two-tier, geocentric universe. The Earth, mutable and corruptible, was placed at the center. The sublunary sphere, essentially from the moon to the Earth, was subject to the transmutations of the four elements. This sphere alone was subject to the horrors of change, death, and decay.

Beyond the moon, in the supralunary sphere, the four earthly elements that catalyze change are gone. The rest of the cosmos, a nested system of crystalline celestial spheres, from the sublunary to the sphere of the fixed stars, is made of a different fabric—the quintessence, the fifth element. Chaste and immutable, the quintessence is flawlessly manifest in the shape of the crystal concentric orbs about the central Earth. And the further out we fly beyond the moon, the purer the quintessence becomes, until it meets its purest form in the sphere of Aristotle’s God, the Prime Mover.

But Galileo’s early experiments with the telescope put Aristotle’s cosmos to the sword, for Galileo began to show that Heaven and Earth were made up of the same stuff. The moon was cratered and craggy, the sun’s spots appeared to be an impurity in the quintessence, and the idea began to dawn in the minds of medieval scholars that matter was universal and mutable. In Galileo’s words, “What greater folly can be imagined than to call gems, silver, and gold noble, and earth and dirt base? … These men who so extol incorruptibility, inalterability, and so on … deserve to meet with a Medusa’s head that would transform them into statues of diamond and jade, that so they might become more perfect than they are … It is my opinion that the Earth is very noble and admirable by reason of the many and different alterations, mutations, and generations which incessantly occur in it.”

The Origin of the Chemical Elements

Fast-forward four centuries. By the late 19th century, the idea of the Periodic Table of chemical elements had begun to take shape. So, when the 20th century belief of the beginning and evolution of the universe—the so-called big bang theory—emerged, it had to take account of all things in the cosmos. And that included the origin and development of the chemical elements.

Early on, advocates of big bang cosmology realized that the universe is evolutionary. In the words of one famous cosmologist, George Gamov, “We conclude that the relative abundances of atomic species represent the most ancient archaeological document pertaining to the history of the universe.” In other words, the periodic table is evidence of the evolution of matter, and atoms can testify to the history of the cosmos.

But early versions of big bang cosmology held that all the elements of the universe were fused in one fell swoop. As Gamov puts it, “These abundances …” meaning the ratio of the elements (heaps of hydrogen, hardly any gold—that kind of thing), “… must have been established during the earliest stages of expansion, when the temperature of the primordial matter was still sufficiently high to permit nuclear transformations to run through the entire range of chemical elements.” It was a neat idea, but very wrong. Only hydrogen, helium, and a dash of lithium could have formed in the big bang. All of the elements heavier than lithium were made much later, by being fused in evolving and exploding stars.

How do we know this? Because at the same time some scholars were working on the big bang theory, others were trying to ditch the big bang altogether. Its association with thermonuclear devices made it seem hasty, and its implied mysterious origins tainted it with creationism. And so, a rival camp of cosmologists developed an alternate theory: the Steady State.

The Steady State held that the universe had always existed. And always will. Matter is created out of the vacuum of space itself. Steady State theorists, working against the big bang and its flaws, were obliged to wonder where in the cosmos the chemical elements might have been cooked up, if not in the first few minutes of the universe. Their answer: in the furnaces of the very stars themselves. They found a series of nuclear chain reactions at work in the stars. First, they discovered how fusion had made elements heavier than carbon. Then, they detailed eight fusion reactions through which stars convert light elements into heavy ones, to be recycled into space through stellar winds and supernovae.

And so, it’s the inside of stars where the alchemist’s dream comes true. Every gram of gold began billions of years ago, forged out of the inside of an exploding star in a supernova. The gold particles lost into space from the explosion mixed with rocks and dust to form part of the early Earth. They’ve been lying in wait ever since.