Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking

When weapons builders detonated the firsts hydrogen bomb in 1952, they tapped into the biggest source of energy in our solar system - the phenomenon that makes the sun shine. Nuclear fusion seems a virtually unlimited source of power, but it has been at the centre of a tragic and comic pursuit that has left scores of scientists battered and disgraced. There's something uniquely alluring about the crusade for fusion energy - a pull so strong that is has beguiled an entire community of scientists for half a century. Like the eternal quest to build a perpetual motion machine, the dream of harnessing the energy of a miniature star is irresistible. Not only would a fusion energy device give the world endless electrical power, it would give power to its inventors - financial power, the power of fame, even military might. 

Scientists, even amateurs, and governments have spent almost unfathomable wealth trying to fulfill the dream, attempting to bottle the sun with lasers, magnets, sound waves, particle beams, and chunks of metal. right now the world's richest countries are spending billions of dollars trying to build a giant fusion rector. Yet if history is any guide, the money will not bring the dream of fusion energy within reach. Indeed, the quest for fusion energy has been a failure, generation after generation. Over and over again, desperate sceintiest have deceived themselves and their peers - and cheated - in hopes of keeping the fusion quest alive and becoming the masters of unlimited power.