For the entirety of recorded history, humans have worshipped nuclear fusion. It's gone by different names over the millennia, of course: the Egyptians called it Ra, the Greeks called it Helios, and the Aztecs knew it as Tonatiuh.
Today, most of us know it as the Sun, but leading physicists around the world regard it with the same sense of awe as our ancient ancestors. This is not because these physicists believe the Sun rides across the sky in a giant reed boat, ready to exact retribution on us mortals at any moment, however. Rather, they know that the Sun harbors the secret to a virtually unlimited source of clean energy.
Every second, trillions of hydrogen ions are fusing in the Sun's ultradense 27 million degree core. The crushing weight of the Sun's gravity forces the protons of hydrogen atoms so close together that they combine into a heavier atom (helium) and release an enormous amount of energy: a process called nuclear fusion. Even though the natural fusion reactors at the heart of stars are abundant in the universe, this process has been remarkably hard to replicate on Earth. This is because the Sun's own gravity is able to contain the ultra hot and ultra dense plasma at its core, but trying to contain even small amounts of hydrogen plasma in containers on Earth for a few hundredths of a second has proven to be a difficult challenge for engineers and physicists.
If the processes powering the fusion reactor at the Sun's core could be recreated on Earth, it would be one of the most important events in the history of our species. Nuclear fusion power plants could end our dependency on fossil fuels and provide a virtually limitless, highly efficient source of clean energy. They could help end the developing world's energy crisis and lift it from poverty. They could provide the power for large scale desalination plants and end water shortages. They could also change life off Earth, providing power to lunar and Martian colonies, or even interstellar generation ships.
Of course this future assumes that fusion reactors are even possible.
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