Obama has gold in him? That is quite exciting, even 20 year later.
Can’t they transmute base metals into gold by nuclear hocus pocus now?
If they could, they’d only be able to make an atom of it and that might only last for a billionth of a second. That’s not really too handy if you’re trying to make a real estate purchase, for instance.
Sure, but you have to be a level 60 enchanter and your jewelrymaking skill has to be maxxed out.
…I put on my robe and wizard hat…
Gold is also used in musical instruments. I have several gold-plated saxophone mouthpieces (besides sounding good, the plating is necessary as protection against the toxicity of the bell metal alloy the mouthpieces are made of). Professional grade flutes have gold alloy springs, and some use gold for the embouchure, the head joint, or even the whole body.
Timely…
Possible discovery of fabled mother lode sparks new Klondike gold rush
The article doesn’t suggest the size of the deposit(s), but does discuss the concentration…
I checked the net, it can and has been done, and for more than a billionth of a second too. (Prohibitively expensive, certainly, cheaper and faster than the ocean route though!)
Ok, let me just say that the report of the soviet physicists is open to question. If nothing else, lead that is used in reactors around the world might have exhibited the same reaction. I haven’t found any references to such a thing. And, as your cite mentioned, the gold the Seborg et al may have formed was unstable and did not remain as elemental gold. Point is, at this state of the art, don’t put your money on a company that can, even via radioactivity, turn your fishing weights into jewelry.
Well, poking around a bit, turning lead to gold from nuclear methods seems particularly troublesome, as lead is higher up on the periodic table, and thus you’d have to split parts out of its nucleus, instead of bombarding it.
But no really common ‘base metal’ is in a really convenient place for the bombardment method either. The best one I could find was tin
If you take tin 120, bombard each nucleus with 14 beta particles, 1 proton, and 20 neutrons, then you should have gold 197 left over. Good luck trying to juggle that reaction on a large scale though. 
Which makes me think, is there some other valuable in-demand element, below Uranium on the table, that could be more easily formed from a common element by nuclear bombardment?
Yeah, ironically it’s actually easier to turn gold into lead than the other way around.
Quoth ghardester:
Well, yes, but why is it worth that much? Almost entirely just because it’s pretty and shiny. You can eat wheat or beef, you can make things out of steel or copper. Those things have intrinsic value. Gold, though, despite what Ron Paul will tell you, has almost no intrinsic value beyond just being pretty (yes, there are a few practical uses for gold, but not nearly as much as for steel).
I don’t think there’s that much refined silver in the world, let alone gold.
Apparently the California gold rush miners only got the more obvious stuff and there’s quite a bit more down there; it just hasn’t yet been worth the cost of digging it out. Some local people still go panning in the hills and claim you can get a decent return for a week’s work. At the library, I’ve had guys looking for old maps so they can camp at a good spot.
I casually researched this for my book…they say that in order to change the lead atom it has to be put into a higher state, the article claims “bismuth”…when the atoms fraction off, I suspect there were traces of mercury and thallium along with the gold and whatever other elements the atom parts happen to stick together as.
I’m new in this field of exploration, so I have no freaking idea what the hell happens. 
Any chance for lithium?
Plutonium.
lol
For certain values of “below uranium”, agreed.
All this talk of transmutation reminds me of another Pterry quote, about alchemists with the remarkable talent for turning gold into less gold. 
I think it’s a chicken-and-egg thing. Gold has value because it’s rare, so it’s main use is to display wealth. True, gold is of little use for making tools, weapons (except bullets), and I-beams, but if gold were as common as iron I think a lot more uses would have been found for it. Gold is probably better than lead for most things lead has been used for; it probably would replace copper in many uses.
Gold is pretty and shiny mainly because it resists oxidation. That’s a very useful property in a metal. Gold was used for tooth fillings (originally, at least) despite, not because of, its value - because it was the best material for the job. I would bet that cheap-as-iron gold, gold alloy, or gold plating would have been used in a lot of situations where corrosion was a problem.
There he goes: Columbus sailing to America in his gold-plated ships in search of spices, oblivious to shipworms.