It’s never encouraging for a theory when scientists investigate “swapping one assumption for another.”
Sounds like they might have caught a terminal case of the Big Data/Data Mining disease.
Then there is the work done at the University of Gothenburg, the patents assigned to the University, regarding methods to produce ultra-dense hydrogen. There are papers published in the last two decades, some relevant for the use of UDH (Deuterium) to produce pre-compressed fuel pellets for Inertial Confinement Fusion.
Turns out the UDH of all flavors is only meta-stable, and given a tickle, decomposes. Storing any appreciable amount is currently viewed as impractical, as the material was determined to undergo spontaneous decay.
An induced decay process provided for other possibilities.
Of intense interest was the muon production detected in the scattershot of various hydrogen clusters ejected upon loss of equilibrium. If these muons are decay products from mesons generated by Coulomb explosion in the UDH, some physics would require scrutiny.
Norrønt Fusion Energy is exploring refinement of this discovery toward an application for a muon driven fusion process.