Our industrialising world has an insatiable demand for energy, but sources are running out. Oil and coal are burning away - solar, wind and water are decades from providing a replacement, if they ever will.
The biggest question for science today is how to provide the energy that mankind will rely on. The answer, says Daniel Clery in this deeply researched and revelatory book, is to be found in the original energy source, the Sun. There, at its centre, nuclear fusion generates enormous energy. By harnessing a piece of this, mankind can secure the heat and power to survive.
The simple yet extraordinary ambition of nuclear-fusion scientists has created many sceptics but, as Clery explains in A Piece of the Sun, large-scale nuclear fusion is scientifically possible. His passionately and eloquently argued conclusion is that the only thing keeping us from harnessing its cheap, clean and renewable energy is our own shortsightedness and folly. A Piece of the Sun is an accessible, rousing wake-up call.
