Sun in a Bottle

Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun, and the first hydrogen bomb tapped into it in 1952. Since then, governments and research teams have tried to tame it as a nearly limitless source of power. This is a history of that effort, told as non-fiction, and it is a record of repeated failure.

The attempts have used lasers, magnets, sound waves, particle beams and chunks of metal. Each has fallen short, and generations of scientists have been battered or disgraced along the way. The most recent venture is ITER, a giant international project costing billions of dollars, which is only now getting underway.

Charles Seife follows the story through the people who shaped it. Andrei Sakharov appears as a brilliant and tortured figure, and Edward Teller as a single-minded, Strangelovean one. Ronald Richter is a secretive physicist whose lies embarrassed an entire country. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann are the two chemists behind what is presented as the greatest scientific fiasco of the past hundred years.

The tone mixes the tragic with the comic, and the account runs from fusion's beginnings into the 21st century. It suits readers curious about the history of science, nuclear energy and the human cost of chasing an enormous prize. Seife is also the author of Zero.