US Startup Claims To Have Turned Mercury Into Gold, Says It Beat CERN’s Record By 10 Times | VIDEO
· Free Press Journal
Mumbai, October 23, 2026: A San Francisco-based startup, Marathon Fusion, has claimed that it has successfully converted mercury into real, stable gold, achieving a production rate 10 times higher than the record set by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 2025.
The company announced the development in a social media post on October 22, describing it as a major step towards producing gold using nuclear fusion technology.
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The startup said it had demonstrated the process last month but did not reveal the quantity of gold produced. The claim is significant as scientists have long explored ways to turn one element into another. However, the company’s reported achievement is yet to establish whether gold can be produced on a commercially viable scale.
Startup Claims Breakthrough In Gold Production
In its post on X, Marathon Fusion said, “Last month, we demonstrated high-rate alchemy: turning mercury into real, stable gold, beating CERN’s record by a factor of 10.”
The company said its production rate was 10 times the benchmark established by CERN researchers in 2025. It also shared gamma-ray measurements which, according to the startup, showed the presence of mercury-197 and gold-197 after irradiation.
Last month, we demonstrated high-rate alchemy: turning mercury into real, stable gold, beating CERN’s record by a factor of 10. Last week, we enriched isotopes in the world’s most powerful plasma centrifuge, beating the Soviet record that stood for 40 years. Now, we’re building a fusion reactor in San Francisco to achieve record power density.
— Marathon Fusion (@MarathonFusion) October 21, 2026
Marathon Fusion added, “We’ve reduced alchemy to a series of difficult but tractable engineering problems.”
The statement suggests that the company sees gold production through nuclear reactions as an engineering challenge that could eventually be addressed through further technological development.
How Does Mercury Turn Into Gold?
The process used by Marathon Fusion is known as nuclear transmutation. It involves changing the nucleus of an atom to produce a different isotope or element. Unlike ordinary chemical reactions, which leave the nucleus unchanged, nuclear transmutation alters the structure of the atom itself.
The startup’s proposed method uses high-energy neutrons generated through deuterium-tritium fusion. These neutrons interact with mercury-198, a naturally occurring stable isotope, and convert it into radioactive mercury-197. This then decays into gold-197, which is a stable isotope of gold.
The company said it had also used fusion-generated neutrons to irradiate zinc and produce copper-64 and copper-67. These radioactive isotopes can be used in cancer diagnosis and targeted treatment, suggesting that the technology could have applications beyond gold production.
Could Fusion Reactors Become Gold Factories?
In a research paper published in 2025, Marathon Fusion proposed placing mercury in a blanket surrounding the core of a fusion reactor. The company estimated that a fusion plant generating one gigawatt of thermal power could produce around two tonnes of gold every year.
According to the proposal, selling the gold could provide an additional source of revenue for fusion power plants without affecting electricity production or the reactor’s ability to produce tritium, a fuel required for fusion reactions.
While the possibility of producing gold alongside electricity is promising, the estimates remain theoretical projections rather than commercially demonstrated results. No commercial fusion power plant is currently operating, making large-scale gold production through this method a distant prospect.
How Does It Compare With CERN’s Achievement?
In 2025, researchers working on CERN’s A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) reported producing gold nuclei through collisions involving lead nuclei.
Between 2015 and 2018, CERN’s four main collider experiments produced approximately 86 billion gold nuclei, equivalent to around 29 picograms of gold. The amount was extremely small, but the experiment demonstrated that gold nuclei could be created by transforming another element.
Marathon Fusion now claims to have surpassed CERN’s production rate by a factor of 10. However, unlike CERN’s reported results, the startup has not disclosed the total amount of gold it produced.
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Welspun Corp Bags ₹5,500 Crore US Pipeline Order, Global Order Book Hits Record ₹50,000 CroreThe development presents an interesting possibility for the future of nuclear fusion technology. But until the process is demonstrated on a larger scale, turning mercury into gold remains a scientific achievement with uncertain commercial potential.
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