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Originally Posted by Volans
What is the weight of an atom of gold's nuclei and therefore, what would be the energy required to push that nuclei along at the speed of light?
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yes it's true that it would take infinite energy to push a particle with mass to the speed of light. But the new generation of particle accelerators can get pretty close, like 99.99%, and to your average journo 0.9999c is the same as c I guess.
A gold nucleus weighs in at 3.27 x 10^-25 kg. If a particle accelerator can kick it up to ~10TeV (= 0.0000016 Joules), then it will be going at 0.9998c (= 2.99x10^8 m/s). I think that's well within range for accelerators like the LHC.
Dunno whether that's enough energy to make black holes though