Needless to say, the word "alchemy" is often thought of as the desire of the ancients to pursue the transformation of lower substances into higher ones.
Many people will think that the level of science in ancient times is not as good as that of modern times, so many ancient "science" is clever.
Among them, "alchemy" and "papermaking" are ancient sciences that are widely regarded as clever tricks.
Ancient people wanted to smelt iron into gold, was it stupid to a certain extent?
But was the purpose of the alchemy of the ancients really simply to smelt iron into gold?
1. The definition of alchemy.
Alchemy, which originated in ancient Greece and later developed in Arabia and Europe, is not just chemistry, but also a chemical philosophical thought.
The goal of alchemy is clear, that is, to find the origin of all kinds of things, and to transform low-level matter into high-level matter.
But the goal of alchemy is more than this, its most important goal is to find a "panacea".
This "panacea" can cure all diseases in the human body and even make people immortal.
It can be said that the goal of alchemy is a bit like the research of modern life science, which is to allow human beings to live a long and healthy life.
Alchemy has also developed in China, but due to the limited level of technology in ancient times, alchemy has not been able to achieve great development.
However, the study of alchemy provided people with a way of thinking, that is, open-mindedness, and many possibilities, which was undoubtedly a boost for the development of science at that time.
The ancients naturally did not think that it would be easy to turn iron into gold, but they believed that such a "panacea" existed.
And only gold is the real panacea, and beyond that, there is no other commodity that has the power of a panacea.
So, the study of alchemy, at the level of science and technology in Europe at that time, became how to make gold, or how to make ordinary metals into gold, but this goal was never proved to be true.
It wasn't until the development of modern science that people knew that there was no way to artificially smelt gold.
Even with the most advanced modern technology, there is no way to turn iron into gold.
2. The value of gold.
Is gold really that precious?
Gold is a metallic element that is ubiquitous in the earth's crust, but judging from its distribution in the earth's crust, the distribution of gold is not very large, and it is very rare.
The amount of gold in the earth's crust is about 2 to 10 parts per billion, which is very rare.
And gold has a very important position in modern society.
Gold is considered to be the oldest currency in the world, and this currency has been used since ancient times.
Gold is not just currency, it is also a metal that can be used to make various decorative objects, so it is understandable that the ancients were obsessed with gold.
In addition to this, gold has a very important value, and that is its stability.
Unlike iron metals, gold is subjected to oxidation in nature and turns into "rust", and gold is always golden yellow.
Therefore, the ancients believed that gold, a metal, would not break.
Therefore, the goal of alchemy is to create gold, a precious metal.
However, because of the very high value of gold, it was regarded as a very important metal in ancient times, so the matter of turning iron into gold has not really been practiced.
However, the distribution of gold as a metal in the earth's crust is not uniform.
In some places, the earth's crust is rich in gold, but in most places, the gold content in the earth's crust is very rare.
In the Americas, there is a crop whose seeds contain a lot of gold.
That crop is corn.
In the seeds of corn, it can often contain 3~8mg/kg of gold, and this gold can be very easy to be enriched by plants.
Therefore, people often encounter this situation, some farmers produce corn from the corn field, which looks very yellow, so many people will wonder if it is mixed with yellow ink.
But after inspection, this corn has not been contaminated, but this corn, the price of selling it, will be very high.
The reason is that this corn has more yellow than ordinary corn, which is the gold enriched in corn.
And this rich gold can only be extracted from corn by people through special methods.
3. Biological enrichment.
When scientists were studying corn, they found that corn seeds contain gold, but how did this gold get into corn seeds?
Later, scientists conducted a series of studies, and they found that the metals enriched in crop seeds and how they entered the seeds.
It is well known that in order to survive, plants need to absorb some elements from the soil, and then during their growth, they enrich some elements in their bodies in order to survive on their own.
The ability of plants to absorb elements, because each plant has a different species and a different environment, so the elements absorbed are also different.
But there is one element that can be easily absorbed by plants, and this element is metallic elements such as iron, copper, and zinc.
These metallic elements are often very abundant in the soil, so plants can easily absorb these elements from the soil and then enrich them in the body during the growth process.
And it is through this that human beings can enrich the mineral deposits of these elements.
Scientists plant some plants rich in iron, copper, and zinc into some deposits rich in these metallic elements, and then let these plants grow, and after they die, burn these plants to obtain some ores rich in metallic elements.
This method is the embodiment of bioaccumulation.
Bioenrichment refers to the ability of plants and animals to enrich for specific elements or compounds.
There are two main reasons why plants and animals are rich in elements, one is that plants and animals can activate the elements in the soil and transform inorganic matter into organic matter.
The second is that plants and animals can enrich specific elements from different soils, so that their content in the body is increased.
Bioaccumulation, for humans, has two effects, one is environmental remediation, which can be used to purify contaminated soil.
For example, in some contaminated soils, plants can help people enrich these pollutants, and then people can dispose of these enriched pollutants.
On the other hand, the enrichment of heavy metals in plants may pose a threat to the survival of humans.
For example, in recent years, the incident of excessive heavy metal content in rice exposed is that the plants enrich the heavy metals in the soil, causing people to suffer from heavy metal poisoning after eating these plants.
epilogue
Although the goal of alchemy has never been proven to be realistic, scientists have discovered that corn contains gold, a discovery that has led to a glimpse into the wonders of bioaccumulation.
Exploring the unknown is the reason why scientists are discovering more strange phenomena.