Science: Nature's Onion

In applied (or misapplied) physics, the ugly implications of the Soviet resumption of nuclear testing still made the splashiest news of the week. It took physicists themselves to appreciate the larger implications of a much quieter announcement: the discovery of the omega, a new subatomic particle that exists for an infinitesimal fraction of time on the strange borderline between matter and energy. The track of the evanescent omega may some day lead scientists toward a new level of physical understanding.

No one will ever see the little particle, but theoretical physicists—those mystic prophets...