Nuclear Fusion Has Stumped Scientists for Decades. Here’s How We’ll Finally Unlock Its Limitless Energy.
“If we figure out how to harness this effectively and efficiently, this is it. This is the end. This is the solution,” an expert tells us.
FUSION IS THE ENGINE OF THE UNIVERSE. The smallest microbe to the most complex life found on alien worlds exist because of the cataclysmic physics happening at the heart of every star. Every pinprick of light in the night sky is a mixture of immense gravity and heat creating a self-sustaining thermonuclear explosion that makes life possible.
For nearly a century, scientists have known that this explosive dance of ionized plasma at the heart of our sun is what bathes our planet in light and heat. And since that discovery, universities, laboratories, government agencies, and international coalitions have invested billions into finding some way to bottle the sun and generate clean, limitless energy.
Dozens of private companies funded by some of the richest people in the world are forging ahead with varying ways to create commercial fusion. One of the newest firms in the race for limitless energy wants to harness the laser-blasting tech behind America’s greatest fusion breakthrough to date, while other firms are taking a different route that involves magnets, superconductors, and super-hot plasma.
No matter which approach wins out, if we hope to make commercial fusion a reality within the coming decades, it’ll take a level of scientific dedication (and funding) that would make the Apollo program look like a high school science project.
This is the story of nuclear fusion—how it works, where it’s headed, and what kind of human society it’ll leave in its wake.