Will gold prices crash? US startup turns gold into mercury:Marathon Fusion creates diamond-like moment for the precious metal

Marathon Fusion is a San Francisco-based start-up that claims it has turned mercury into gold. However, the company has not disclosed how much gold it produced in total during the experiment. That is why people are asking whether it will actually be able to produce gold that can be sold in the market. According to The Atlantic, this is not a new idea. There have been attempts to do this before. Let’s look at the entire picture behind Marathon Fusion’s claim: Question 1: What has Marathon Fusion claimed? Answer: Marathon Fusion has said that it has turned mercury into stable gold. The company claims that this achievement is 10 times better than CERN’s previous record. The company said that it is now building a fusion reactor in San Francisco to generate record amounts of electricity and energy. CERN is the world’s largest nuclear and particle physics laboratory, where research is conducted into the fundamental particles and laws of the universe. CERN also inadvertently created gold during collisions of lead particles in its Large Hadron Collider, but it was produced in an extremely tiny quantity. Question 2: Why does Marathon Fusion actually want to make gold? Answer: Making gold is not Marathon Fusion’s main business; it is more like a side business. Nuclear fusion is an extremely clean and limitless source of energy that could replace coal and petrol in the future, but the technology is very expensive. According to the company’s co-founder Adam Rutkowski, the millions of dollars earned by selling the gold produced during fusion could help offset the enormous costs of nuclear fusion. Every metal or element has its own identity, determined by the number of protons at its centre. Mercury has 80 protons at its centre, while gold has 79. This means that if just one proton were removed from mercury, it would automatically become gold. Question 3: What is the process of making gold from mercury? Answer: Step 1-During the fusion reaction, the company bombards the mercury with extremely high-speed neutrons. A high-speed neutron collides with a mercury atom and knocks a neutron out of it. As a result, the mercury is transformed into a temporary and radioactive form called ‘mercury-197’. Step 2-This form of mercury-197 cannot remain in this state for long. Within about 64 hours, it absorbs an electron to stabilise itself. As soon as it absorbs the electron, one of the protons inside the mercury changes into a neutron. This reduces the number of protons from 80 to 79. Question 4: What is nuclear fusion technology and how does it work? Answer: Nuclear fusion is the same process through which the Sun continuously produces energy. In this process, two atoms, such as hydrogen isotopes, are fused together under extremely high temperatures and pressure. This fusion produces a huge amount of clean energy. Question 5: Has gold ever been created in a laboratory with the help of science? Answer: Question 6: If this technology becomes successful, how much gold could be produced at a plant? Answer: According to a 2025 research paper by Marathon Fusion, a commercial fusion plant with 1 gigawatt of thermal power could produce around 2 tonnes of gold annually. Question 7: What are the biggest practical and technical obstacles facing this project? Answer: It faces two major obstacles: Question 8: What mystery has surrounded ‘alchemy’ and the philosopher’s stone throughout history? Answer: For 2,000 years, humans have dreamed of turning base metals into gold. Medieval alchemists believed that there was a magical stone that could turn any metal into gold merely by touching it. King Henry IV of England banned alchemy in the 15th century because he feared that if anyone managed to create gold at will, the value of the royal gold coins would fall. In 1782, British chemist James Price claimed that he could turn mercury into gold using a magical powder. When he was asked to demonstrate this publicly before scientists, he drank poison and died in front of witnesses. In the 20th century, Rudolf Hunter claimed that he could produce thousands of dollars’ worth of gold every day using the laws of the sun, but he died before he could prove it. Question 9: What are other scientists and experts saying about Marathon’s claim? Answer: Question 10: Will lab-made gold cause gold prices to fall in the market? Answer: Making gold, unlike synthetic diamonds, is not cheap. According to the World Gold Council, the world’s mines produced 3,672 tonnes of gold in 2025. A total of 2,22,600 tonnes of mined gold already exists worldwide. Marathon’s estimated annual production of 2 tonnes will not have much of an impact.