Number 149 (Story #4), October 28, 1993 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein THE EXISTENCE OF STABLE STRANGE MATTER , matter containing nuclei whose quark inventories include strange quarks, has been hypothesized since the 1970s. Such strange matter might exist, perhaps in the form of a quark-gluon plasma, in the cores of collapsed stars. A new theory introduced by Carl Dover of Brookhaven (30 August 1993 Physical Review Letters) suggests that under some conditions strange baryons (quark triplets containing one, two, or even three strange quarks) might clump together in large globs. Scientists at Brookhaven will search for evidence of the strange-matter states in high-energy collisions between gold nuclei. (Science, 8 Oct. 1993.)