From this and related research, most of it using simple table-top apparatus (and some very complex mathematics), scientists have devised theories that life itself may have arisen from structures as conceptually simple as sand piles.

And, while operating their table-top apparatus, scientists at the institute have achieved a temperature only one-millionth of a degree Celsius above absolute zero, a world record for extreme cold.

In Utah, the 1989 cold-fusion announcement set off gold-rush fever over the hope of turning a table-top apparatus into a font of nearly limitless energy and profit.

But the new process was said to occur at room temperature in a simple table-top apparatus that passes an electric current through heavy water and palladium rods.

Dr. Pons and his British colleague, Dr. Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton, have said they fused atoms at room temperature in a simple table-top apparatus, generating large amounts of excess energy.

In contrast, researchers in Utah asserted that their feat of controlled fusion had been done in a simple table-top apparatus that could easily be enlarged to generate huge amounts of heat and electric power.

Cold fusion stunned the scientific world because its discoverers claimed to have achieved the long-sought goal in a simple table-top apparatus working at room temperature.

So is the gold-rush fever over the hope of turning a table-top apparatus into a font of nearly limitless energy and profit.

March 8 - Claims regarding bubble fusion, in which a table-top apparatus is reported as producing small-scale fusion in a liquid undergoing acoustic cavitation, are published.

The report was written by three Texas A&M professors assigned to investigate the research, which followed the March 1989 claim by scientists in Utah that they had achieved cold fusion in a simple, table-top apparatus.