Ramis is quick to point out that it is not just Buddhists who are able to draw parallels with the film. Scholars of Judaism have also leapt on it, and Ramis claims that many Buddhists in the US started out as Jews. "There is a remarkable correspondence of philosophies and even style between the two," said Zito, who was raised in the Jewish tradition but practises no religion. "I am wearing meditation beads on my wrist, but that's because I'm on a Buddhist diet. They're supposed to remind me not to eat, but they actually just get in the way when I'm cutting my steak."

The United Nations warns today of the dangers posed by biotechnology companies scrambling to turn Antarctica's microscopic life forms into the raw material for a billion-dollar industry making everything from detergents to cancer treatments.

Still, for roughly half a century, nuclear scientists have been searching for an elusive "island of stability," somewhere among the superheavies, in which long-lived elements with new chemical properties might exist. Dr. Loveland said that the new results indicated that scientists might be closing in on that island.

"We're sort of in the shoals of the island of stability," said Dr. Kenton J. Moody, a Livermore nuclear physicist who was one of the experimenters in the work.