en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation

In stellar nucleosynthesis, iron is the endpoint because fusion to iron does not yield increasing energy beyond that point. Authoritative NASA explanations say stars build elements up to iron, and that iron requires more energy to fuse than it creates. NASA Goddard likewise explains that elements lighter than iron generally emit energy if fused and that iron releases no energy when fused. So the problem is not that iron itself is produced by an endothermic reaction; rather, fusion of iron (or of heavier nuclei) is energetically unfavorable. The article's wording incorrectly states that producing iron is endothermic.

This sentence conflicts with standard historical accounts of nuclear physics. A 1934 Nature summary states that the first artificial transmutation was accomplished in 1919, when nitrogen was disintegrated by alpha-particle bombardment. The American Institute of Physics’ chronology likewise records that Rutherford caused transmutation from one stable chemical element into another in 1919. Blackett’s later cloud-chamber work was important because it provided clearer experimental evidence and identified the residual oxygen nucleus, but that is different from saying he accomplished the first artificial transmutation.

The statement is too broad because uranium is not a single nuclear species. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission explains that uranium-235 fissions with low-energy thermal neutrons, but uranium-238 does not; for U-238, a neutron must have additional energy for fission to occur. NRC’s reactor explainer likewise says the chain reaction depends on U235, and that U238 cannot sustain the fission process without the help of an elevated concentration of U235. So the sentence is inaccurate as written: it should specify uranium-235 (or another fissile isotope), not “a uranium atom” in general.

This sentence misstates Rutherford and Soddy’s discovery. The American Institute of Physics’ Rutherford exhibit says that their work on thorium in 1901 and 1902 provided chemical evidence for a change from thorium to “thorium X”, establishing that radioactive decay produced a new atom. Frederick Soddy’s own later summary in Scientific American says their 1902 conclusion about thorium was that one product was the thorium emanation, a gas, formed from thorium through the intermediary thorium-X. Those sources do support that Rutherford and Soddy recognized radioactive transmutation, but not that they discovered thorium converting itself into radium.

The sentence incorrectly groups the s-process with supernova explosions and neutron-star mergers. Physics Today explains that in asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, neutron-capture events are separated by long intervals, which is the defining condition for the slow neutron-capture (s-) process. By contrast, in cataclysmic environments such as supernovae a nucleus can capture several neutrons within seconds, corresponding to the rapid neutron-capture (r-) process. A separate NASA explanation of heavy-element production likewise describes r-process elements as forming in environments with enormous neutron densities, such as neutron-star collisions or some supernova explosions. So the article’s wording is wrong because it places both s- and r-process nucleosynthesis in explosive events, when the s-process is primarily an AGB-star process.

This sentence appears to misread the underlying paper. The 2022 article “Producing gold at ISOLDE-CERN” does not report creating only 18 nuclei total. Its abstract says the researchers measured the yield of 18 ion beams of radioactive gold nuclei produced in a thick uranium target bombarded by 1.4-GeV protons. In other words, the paper concerns 18 gold radioactive ion beams / isotopic species, not merely 18 individual nuclei.