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Comment by adrian_b | Hacker News Reader

Usually the neutrino will interact with a nucleus and what happens is the reverse of a beta decay, i.e. either a proton will be changed into a neutron or a neutron into a proton, with the emission of an electron or a positron.

So one atom will be converted into an atom of another element, which is a neighbor to it in the periodic table.

Because one neutral lepton goes in and one charged lepton goes out, you might say that the neutrino snatches an electric charge from a nucleus, transmuting it into the nucleus of another element. However this interaction happens extremely seldom. In most cases the neutrino passes by without any effects.

Nevertheless, there has been a proposal to generate extremely powerful neutrino beams, with which to destroy any hidden nuclear weapons.

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So if we could force neutrino interactions at scale we could make any element we want in large quantities?

Using neutrinos is far less efficient than using gamma radiation or neutrons or high energy electrons or ions for transmutations.

The photons/neutrons/electrons/ions have a high probability of interaction with the target, while the neutrinos have a very low probability of interaction.

All the elements that do not exist in nature due to low lifetime have been produced by transmutation, but this can be done only for very small quantities at huge prices.

Thanks for a great couple of replies. I'd just add that there are almost certainly more superheavy elements not thought to exist in nature which have yet to be produced artificially, but probably will be at some point.

... but which instantly decay. So not interesting.

There are definitely unstable superheavy elements that have never yet been produced, or at least detected, but the interesting prediction (widely accepted, but far from proven) is that there are some stable ones.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability

In some sense this is how particle collisions works. You collide something and with certain probability you get something else at the other end under the physical constraints. Probably you want to use bigger particles and lower energy though to go from subatomic to atomic/molecular scale. The laser ignition fusion experiments would be closer to that. (Mind the costs though :))

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis

I imagine like a lot of the nuclear alchemy the cost is much higher than just getting the existing material you want.

But for something like a kardashev type 2 or 3 civilization with abundant energy, it would be trivial and saves time searching for and accumulating the material? It would also be conflict free.

Maybe we could start with processing nuclear waste though.

Having a big pile of random heavy elements can be a worse environmental issue.

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