Most people know alchemy simply as the quest to make gold from ‘base’ metals such as lead, and this was indeed a major part of the alchemical endeavour, the ‘great work’ of the philosophers when interest in alchemy was at its peak around the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe. At that time those men who were obsessed with the idea of making gold and spent all day every day at their furnaces in their home made laboratories were know by the derogatory epithet ‘puffers and blowers’.
Despite the fact that these men were derided at the time, and that today most people think of alchemy and its ideas about turning lead into gold as nothing but deluded, superstitious nonsense it is interesting to note that it is actually possible to make gold from other metals. In fact, all gold which exists in the whole universe was made from other metals - through the processes of nuclear fusion burning inside the stars. The only reason that there are not alchemical factories on every street corner making gold is because of the technical difficulty and the energy requirements, not because it is impossible..read more...
