A group of European physicists believe they can solve the mystery behind dozens of nuclear experiments carried out more than a decade ago. The experiments—conducted with various detectors, at various energies, and involving various nuclear species—produced such puzzling results that many of the experimenters turned their attention to the study of other systems. Now, Jerzy Dudek of University Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg, France) and his colleagues at Warsaw University (Poland) and the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) think that the old results can be explained by nuclei having tetrahedral symmetry. Just as so-called magic nuclei have the right number of neutrons and protons to readily form stable spherical nuclei, so too can such magic numbers be expected for forming pyramidal nuclei. Stable, in this case, means that the state persists from 1012 to 1014 times longer than the typical 10–21 seconds for nuclear reactions. In tetrahedral nuclei, up...

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