A US-based startup, Marathon Fusion, has claimed that it successfully converted mercury into stable gold using nuclear fusion technology. The San Francisco-based company says its method achieved a gold-production rate ten times higher than a benchmark reported by CERN in 2025. However, the claim has not yet been independently verified.
How Can Mercury Be Converted Into Gold?
The process involves nuclear transmutation, which changes an element by altering its atomic nucleus. Marathon Fusion says it used high-energy neutrons generated during fusion reactions to bombard mercury-198, producing radioactive mercury-197. This isotope then decays into gold-197, a stable form of gold.
Unlike ordinary chemical reactions, which cannot change one element into another, nuclear reactions can alter an atom’s identity.
How Does It Compare With CERN’s Experiment?
In 2025, CERN reported that experiments at the Large Hadron Collider had produced approximately 29 picograms of gold during operations conducted between 2015 and 2018. The quantities were extremely small, and the gold nuclei existed only briefly before being destroyed in collisions with accelerator equipment.
Marathon Fusion claims its approach can produce gold at ten times CERN’s reported rate. However, the company has not publicly disclosed the quantity produced, and the two results may not be directly comparable.
Could Lab-Made Gold Affect Gold Prices?
The announcement has raised questions about whether artificially produced gold could eventually affect the global gold market. Marathon Fusion has previously outlined projections suggesting that future fusion plants could produce substantial quantities of gold as a byproduct.
These figures remain theoretical. Commercial fusion power plants are not yet operating as a commercially established source of electricity, and producing gold at scale would require advanced technology, extensive processing and significant investment. Radioactive byproducts could also create additional safety and storage challenges
Independent Verification Remains Essential
Although turning mercury into gold sounds like a modern version of alchemy, nuclear transmutation is a recognised scientific process. The key questions are whether Marathon Fusion’s reported result can be independently reproduced and whether the method can produce usable gold economically.
For now, the startup’s announcement represents a claim of scientific progress rather than proof that commercially produced gold could soon compete with mined gold.
