For ages, people have sought to convert lead to gold though alchemy. Some skeptics said that was impossible or uneconomical.
(Enter... no one)
Turns out the skeptics are right and no amount of positive attitude and can-do spirit can change that fact.
Terraforming Mars is a lot closer to alchemy than powered flight, if the literal matter needed does not already exist on Mars. If we have the technology for space-tugs that can transport an atmosphere's worth of matter to it, I doubt we'd still be interested in the project.
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.
Arthur C. Clarke had the following to say on the subject:
1: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
While terraforming Mars is certainly a daunting prospect the single fact that there is not enough CO2 to create enough of a greenhouse effect to warm the planet does not seem enough of a reason for me to give up on the prospect. There are more effective greenhouse gases than CO2, methane comes to mind. 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.
>> 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.
No.
For ages, people have sought to convert lead to gold though alchemy. Some skeptics said that was impossible or uneconomical.
(Enter... no one)
Turns out the skeptics are right and no amount of positive attitude and can-do spirit can change that fact.
Terraforming Mars is a lot closer to alchemy than powered flight, if the literal matter needed does not already exist on Mars. If we have the technology for space-tugs that can transport an atmosphere's worth of matter to it, I doubt we'd still be interested in the project.