First of all. I am really bad at chemistry and all that. So this might or more likely will sound at least primitive... But this question has been bothering me for far too long.
So, I was reading about an atom. How all different kinds of it differ by the number of protons in its nucleus. And that gave me this utopian thought: maybe in far (like, really far) future we will have some sort of super "printers" which could take anything as their "ink" and somehow turn that anything (a brick for example) into manageable atoms.
Then it probably should identify each atom, by counting its protons and edit it by "deleting", "adding" or separating needed number of the protons and neutrons.
So my question is... Do you think this is theoretically possible?Are there any known ways of changing the number of protons?
*Edit: as it turns out, there is a talk going on about this kind of utopia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzgVWpa4fzU
Big thanks for your answers! I wasn't expecting to receive any answers :)*