"Matt Barrow" wrote:
The last I heard of BYU physics department was those two bozos that
did a press conference annoncing they'd solved cold fusion.

That's incorrect. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman (P & F) did their work
at the University of Utah - not BYU. Steven Jones did his work at Brigham
Young University. P & F's cold fusion attempts utilized palladium
catalysis. Jones' cold fusion attempts utilized muon-catalyzed fusion. The
two mechanisms have nothing in common except the name "cold fusion". Muon-
catalyzed fusion was predicted decades ago and has been observed in the lab
- the only issue under contention is whether the muons can last long enough
to induce enough fusion events to offset the energy needed to create the
muons.

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion