Comment by DrScientist
7 days ago
More seriously you could argue that the whole reason for the LHC is to turn matter/energy of one form into matter/energy ( stuff ) of another.
Though rather than lead into gold, it's known stuff into unknown or previously unseen but predicted stuff.
So it is, in fact, a giant Alchemy machine. Newton would have been proud.
Particle accelerators smash together stuff we know about in order to make stuff we don't know much about so we can study it. There's an ELI5 for ya.