Window Opens into Strange Nuclei

Some of the strangest atomic nuclei ever observed have made fleeting appearances

in a recent accelerator experiment. Whereas ordinary nuclei contain protons and

neutrons, so-called hypernuclei produced in an experiment at Brookhaven National

Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., also contain exotic particles quite different from

those in ordinary matter. Although such particles, known as lambdas, have been

spotted in nuclei before, this is the first time that nuclei with pairs of these

exotic particles have been generated by the dozen, scientists say.