>> For ages, people have sought to convert lead to gold though alchemy. Some skeptics said that was impossible or uneconomical. > Transforming lead to gold is

>> For ages, people have sought to convert lead to gold though alchemy. Some skeptics said that was impossible or uneconomical. > Transforming lead to gold is possible, it takes a particle accelerator and a lot of energy but it can be done. It has been done in 1980 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California [1] although they started with bismuth instead of lead. I know that (see emphasis above). The process you cite is utterly uneconomical. It is impossible to transform lead to gold in all practical senses. > What is not readily present on Mars can be 'liberated' from it chemical bonds or deposited there by means of inbound objects rich in the required substance. Again, the technology and resources required to transport an atmosphere's worth of matter to Mars likely have far more beneficial uses that a terraforming project, such as the construction and provisioning of large habitable space stations.