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Alchemy and the Philosopher's Stone
Topic Started: Sep 18 2011, 01:00 PM (317 Views)
thecostumedanceparty
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Read about it here (it's long, I didn't look at the whole thing): http://jukkaa.searchwarp.com/swa27021.htm

Do you think it's real? If so, where can we find a Philosopher's stone? How do we make one? Or is it impossible? And no, this is not a reference to Harry Potter.
Edited by thecostumedanceparty, Sep 18 2011, 01:01 PM.
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

It's one of those things that I really want to be true, but unfortunately, there's just no reason to believe it is. The idea of a stone that could transmute one metal into another may have seemed plausible in Flamel's time, but we now know that the alchemical understanding of the underlying processes was thoroughly wrong; this was centuries before we even had any understanding of atomic theory, let alone nuclear fusion and fission.

Then there's the problem of binding energy (that is, the energy required to break a nucleus up into its component parts). For metals like iron or nickel, this is higher than for silver or gold, so if you tried to turn iron into gold, you'd require more energy to break up the iron nuclei than would be released from forming the gold nuclei. (Incidentally, this is what brings about the end of a star's life: it gets its energy from fusing hydrogen in its core to helium, then helium to something heavier (like carbon), then carbon to something heavier still (like oxygen), but once it gets up to iron, it can't get energy in this way any more, because fusing the iron into something heavier (like gold) requires more energy than is released from the formation of that heavier element. Anyway, I'd best get back on-topic :P )

As for the bit about curing diseases, I could also bring up that this was well before germ theory was widely accepted, but actually, it fails even by a 14th Century understanding of medicine. Back then, many people believed that diseases were caused by the wrath of God. If the Philosopher's Stone had the power to cure any disease, would that make the Philosopher's Stone more powerful than God?

Still, it's a nice idea. Maybe there will be a way to use advanced technology to make it in hundreds or thousands of years' time; after all, to quote Arthur C. Clarke, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Or, we could just avoid all these issues entirely by appealing to the supernatural :P ! Either way, I'll believe it only when I see it for myself.

[EDIT: Why did this end up being a wall of text ^o) ????]
Edited by CJ, Sep 18 2011, 01:51 PM.
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