The old alchemist's dream

With today's technology, that dream can be fulfilled- sort of.  I came across this discussion in the Wikipedia by way of reading up on cold fusion.  As a matter of fact, gold has been produced this way, but not economically. If you read through this article though, one wonders if an industry can be created by doing this very thing.

Starting with cheap tungsten, it can be treated until it is radioactive.   The decay of the radioactive tungsten will produce rhenium.  By treating the produced rhenium the same way, it will result in osmium.  The market value of osmium is much, much more than the tungsten you started with.

With your profits, you can buy plenty of gold.  It isn't quite the same as turning lead into gold, but it has a similar outcome.

Update:

It has been an interesting day.  Here are my posts for today.  I've covered all the bases except for the markets.  The above isn't a market based post though.  In the markets, gold dropped and so did the dow.  Don't know what, if anything, that means.  Just Mr. Market doing his thing.  Anyway, here's my posts and with that I say until tomorrow.  Thanks for dropping by.