Eliezer wrote:
>Not hydrogen-into-gold (does jon have any idea how much energy that
>would release? it'd be orders of magnitude more than an equivalent
>thermonuclear hydrogen-to-helium),
Actually, the binding energy curve changes slope around iron (56|26 Fe, I
seem to recall) and fusing nuclei heavier than iron actually consumes
energy. See for example
http://www.ucdsb.on.ca/tiss/stretton/chem2/nuc03.htm (which calls out Au
specifically).
MMB