Science: The Basic Stuff

Long before Brookhaven's scientists started to trap neutrinos, other scientists spun far-ranging theories about the little particles. Neutrinos may be small and shy, says Chinese-born Dr. Hong-Yee Chiu of Yale, but they are vastly important. At last week's Manhattan meeting of the American Physical Society, Physicist Chiu explained that neutrinos may well be the basic stuff of the universe.

Until recently, said Dr. Chiu, stars were thought to lose energy (and therefore mass, which turns into energy) in the form of light, heat and other kinds of electromagnetic radiation. Now many scientists see a different picture. The hot centers of stars are...