Theoretical evidence suggests that the fusion of two quarks could be a substantially more energetic event than the fusion of two hydrogen atoms. Two “bottom” quarks release 138 million electron volts when fused to create a nucleon, while the fusion of deuterons/tritons to produce helium nuclei average out to about 18 million electron volts.
That’s cool and all, but the problem is that the lifespan of a free-roaming bottom quark is about one picosecond, while a halflife of tritium is 12.3 years. This means you can’t actually build up any of the stuff. If you posit some near-magical advanced technology that can crank out a kilo of bottom quarks in much less than a picosecond and mash them all together, you’ve probably posited a technology that can make a bigger bang without going to the bother of fusing the quarks… just the process of turning barionic matter into a pile of quarks is probably damaging enough (imagine if the Death Star didn’t just fire a boring old laser beam, but emitted a magical field that converts the baryons that make up a planet into free quarks).
Still, it’s always interesting when science comes up with new stuff that allows science journalists to kinda freak out a bit and produce clickbaity article titles…