Sun in a Bottle - Charles Seife [59]
The science of inertial confinement fusion was following the same trajectory as that of magnetic fusion. Early optimism in the 1950s led scientists to believe that plasmas could be confined and induced to fuse relatively easily. Cheap, million-dollar machines, they thought, would be able to do the job. But the plasma always seemed to wriggle out of control. Instability after instability made the magnetic bottles leak, and million-dollar machines turned into ten-million-dollar and hundred-million-dollar machines. Laser fusion began with similar optimism. Livermore’s scientists thought their first few lasers could get more energy out than they put in. But instabilities like Rayleigh-Taylor allowed the plasma to escape its confinement. Million-dollar lasers grew bigger and more expensive. Soon, laser fusion machines were as expensive as their magnetic counterparts.
Even today, decades later, these two approaches—magnetic fusion and inertial confinement fusion—remain the ways that most scientists are trying to bottle up a tiny sun. But both methods are extremely expensive, and both are plagued with instabilities that threaten to destroy the dream of unlimited fusion energy. Shiva’s failure occurred two decades after Homi J. Bhabha predicted that fusion power plants were twenty years away. Yet in the 1970s, and even into the 1980s, fusion scientists spoke of power plants as being thirty years away. After decades of research, the goal of fusion energy had become ten years more distant.
As fusion scientists built ever-bigger tokamaks and lasers for tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, outsiders began to wonder whether there was another cheaper, easier path to fusion energy. The stage was set for the biggest scientific debacle of modern times: cold fusion.
CHAPTER 6
THE COLD SHOULDER
We are also human, and we need miracles, and hope they exist.
—LEONID PONOMAREV, FUSION SCIENTIST
An intricately crafted glass mushroom on a metal pedestal, the two-foot-tall machine dominated the room—even when it wasn’t running. But when the operator twisted a dial and brought the BioCharger to life, everybody stopped to look. The helical glass coil at the top of the mushroom glowed red, and the whole machine throbbed with electricity. Tubes running up and down the mushroom’s stalk fluoresced with blue and red light. It crackled ominously as strands of violet lightning shimmied down the sides and dissipated into the air. As the crowd stood transfixed, the smiling operator turned the dial back and the machine died abruptly. The smell of ozone lingered in the air.
The BioCharger is a device that supposedly transmits healing energy directly into your body. Its inventor swears that the machine will help cure your thrush, fatigue, diarrhea, night sweats, frequent urination, colds, unrefreshed sleep, and almost anything else that ails you. The machine wouldn’t ordinarily be allowed anywhere near a scientific conference, but the BioCharger wasn’t out of place at this one. Neither was the device to test how much mercury was in your mouth to help diagnose the causes of your diseases, nor the presentation that discussed the “energy chair”: an ordinary white plastic lawn chair with a generator underneath. (“We used to call it the electric chair, but figured we had to change the name,” the presenter said.) The chair supposedly leaves you refreshed and energized after sitting in it. At an ordinary scientific gathering, such claims would be laughed out of the building. But the Second International Conference