Popular Mechanics is well known for putting forth fringe ideas that have little or no validity and claiming they're the next great discovery and will change our lives in the next few years (for good or for ill). Examples include:

Cold fusion
Isomer bombs (based on hafnium isomer transitions
Zero Point Energy
The aforementioned He-3 fusion

And I could go on. Frankly, PM is a rag and little better than a glossy version of the Weekly World News IMO. Remember, this is the magazine that back in the 50's predicted that we'd all be using auto-planes to fly to work by now.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli