Could lab-made gold crash prices like diamonds? US start-up says it turned mercury into gold

NEW: US start-up Marathon Fusion says it has turned mercury into stable gold at ten times CERN's record rate, raising the question of whether lab-made gold could one day crash prices like diamonds.

A US start-up says it turned mercury into gold. Actual gold, actual alchemy, in a lab.

The company is called Marathon Fusion, and they claim they've made stable gold from mercury at ten times the record rate set by CERN. That's the same CERN that runs the Large Hadron Collider, you can see it here, where physicists have transmuted elements before, just in quantities so tiny you'd need a microscope and a lot of patience.

Now, before anyone sells grandma's jewellery, we're talking lab rates, not bullion bars rolling off a conveyor belt. But here's why traders are paying attention. Diamonds were forever, until lab-grown stones showed up and prices fell off a cliff. Gold's entire pitch is scarcity, and you can see why, it's beautiful stuff.

If a machine can make it, that pitch gets complicated. The alchemists chased this for two thousand years. A start-up just said it's done.

This is Angel Manalo, reporting for HIT.