Little Suns on Earth

During most of World War II, Argentina maintained close ties with Germany and remained neutral for its hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the country. After the war, it became the main safe haven for fleeing Germans, while President Juan Perón ordered to secretly smuggle in those with particular military and technological expertise that could help his country forward. One of these people was Austrian-born German scientist Ronald Richter. Convincing Perón about the feasibility of generating unlimited energy through nuclear fusion, Richter managed to receive massive funding to build an experimental fusion reactor on Huemul Island, near the town of San Carlos the Bariloche in Patagonia. After two years of construction, Perón publicly announced that Richter’s experiments had been successful, adding that it all came down to “lighting up artificial suns on the Earth.” Worldwide interest and significant scepticism followed, and after a year of reporters and other scientists visiti