Last week in a quiet triumph, Fermilab, the high- energy physics laboratory outside Chicago, announced a discovery of great importance in the search for a theory of everything — the seamless intellectual framework that would explain how the universe is made.

Firing up the Tevatron, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, an international team of scientists slammed together matter and antimatter, creating volleys of silent, invisible explosions. Then they sifted the debris through their computers, looking for the long-sought prey: exotic wisps called supersymmetric particles — SUSY's for short.