"When weapons builders detonated the first 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 center 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 it 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 reactor. yet is 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 scientists have deceived themselves and their peers - and cheated - in hopes of keeping the fusion quest alive and becoming the masters of unlimited power." "Throughout this journey Charles Seife introduces us to the daring geniuses, villains, and victims of fusion science: the brilliant and tortured Andrei Sakharov; the monomaniacal and Strangelovean Edward Teller; Ronald Richter, the secretive physicist whose lies embarrassed an entire country; and Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, the two chemists behind the greatest scientific fiasco of the past hundred years." "Fusion is at the heart of some of the biggest scientific scandals of all time, and Charles Seife traces its story from its beginning into the twenty-first century. Even after fusion scientists face defeat after defeat, they continue trying to put the sun in a bottle, hoping against hope that they will succeed where others have failed."--BOOK JACKET.