The idea that self-taught amateurs outside the Big Science world of billion-dollar laboratories were tinkering with nukes—fusing atomic nuclei, transmuting elements, constructing atom-smashing machines in DIY laboratories—was both intriguing and unsettling. As members of this guarded clique began to open up to me, one of them mentioned Taylor Wilson, a fourteen-year-old boy from Texarkana who had just become one of only thirty-two individuals on the planet to build a working nuclear fusion reactor, a miniature sun on Earth.

Now, the article I wrote then about Taylor has blossomed into a book.The Boy Who Played with Fusionis a science adventure, a story of audacity, perseverance, and passion—and a boy whose world seems to have no limits. This excerpt, from Chapter 16: The Lucky Donkey Theory, recounts the first attempts of amateur high-energy scientists to achieve nuclear fusion.