Fusion: A Voyage Through the Plasma Universe

This book tells the fascinating, but untold, story of fusion. As the process that fuels the stars and galaxies lighting up the night sky, fusion is the main source of energy in our Universe. We owe our very existence to the warmth of the Sun that it generates and, at the start of the new millennium, fusion may prove to be the only sustainable way to meet the long term energy demands of modern society.Professor Hans Wilhelmsson shares with us his delight and his 50 year, lifelong dream as one of Fusion's main contemporary figures, to recreate on Earth the conditions that give rise to fusion at the heart of the Sun. He takes us through time on an epic voyage where we meet Nobel prize-winning characters such as Bohr, Alfven and Chandrasekhar and the many cultural inspirations that have brought us to the brink of achieving controlled fusion in the laboratory. He charts the Universe stopping en route to explain how fusion and its vehicle, plasma physics, lies behind some of the most awe-inspiring phenomena in,the Cosmos from jets and quasars to the beautiful and mystical Aurora Borealis - the Northern Lights.Forever insightful, the author shows not only the links between developments in space and laboratory plasma physics, he also presents sixteen rare and original colour plates to highlight the relevance of the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci and Max Ernst to the fusion quest.

Hans Wilhelmsson is Professor Emeritus of the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.