Sun In A Bottle:the Strange History Of Fusion And The Science Of Wishful Thinking

摘要

The recipe is enticingly simple. Take four hydrogen nuclei and push them together to form a single helium nucleus. Voila-energy! We know this takes place in nature-inside the Sun-so why not harness the same reaction to power our furnaces, generators, and automobiles? Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to get hydrogen to behave. Bring positively charged hydrogen nuclei close to each other, and their mutual electric repulsion resists compression like a powerful spring, keeping them too far apart to form any helium.. Inside the Sun, enormous pressures and high temperatures overcome that difficulty, but reproducing the same conditions in the laboratory has frustrated scientists for the past half century.