In the middle of one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in St Petersburg, Russia, is a vacant and poorly kept lot about half an acre in size. It’s been empty for years for a reason: on it stood the first scientific research laboratory in Russia – maybe even the world – and for over two and a half centuries generations of Russian scientists hoped to restore it. But its days as an empty lot may be over, for the land could soon be sold to the highest bidder.

The laboratory was the idea of Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765), Russia’s first scientist in the modern sense. Born in 1711 into a shipping family on an island in the far north of Russia, Lomonosov developed a passion for science that saw him study in Moscow, Kyiv and St Petersburg. He then moved to Germany, where he got involved in the then revolutionary, mathematically informed notion that matter is made up of smaller elements called “corpuscles”.

In 1741, at the age of 30, Lomonosov returned to Russia, where he joined the St Petersburg Academy of Science. There he began agitating for the academy to set up a physico-chemistry laboratory of its own. Until then, experimental labs in Russia and elsewhere had been mainly applied institutions for testing and developing paints, dyes and glasses, and for producing medicines and chemicals for gunpowder. But Lomonosov wanted something very different.

His idea was for a lab devoted entirely to basic research and development that could engage and train students to do empirical research on materials. Most importantly, he wanted the academy to run the lab, but the state to pay for it. After years of agitating, Lomonosov’s plan was approved, and the St Petersburg laboratory opened in 1748 on a handy site in the centre of St Petersburg, just a 20-minute walk from the academy, near the university, museums and the city’s famous bridges.

The laboratory was a remarkable place, equipped with furnaces, ovens, scales, thermometers, microscopes, grindstones and other instruments for studying materials

The laboratory was a remarkable place, equipped with furnaces, ovens, scales, thermometers, microscopes, grindstones and various other instruments for studying materials and their properties. Lomonosov and his students used these to analyse ores, minerals, silicates, porcelain, silicates, glasses and mosaics. He also carried out experiments with implications for fundamental theory.

In 1756, for instance, Lomonosov found that certain experiments involving the oxidation of lead carried out by the British chemist Robert Boyle were in error. Indirectly, Lomonosov also suggested a general law of conservation covering the total weight of chemically reacting substances. The law is, these days, usually attributed to the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who also came up with the notion three decades later. But Lomonosov’s work had suggested it.

A symbol for science

Lomonosov left the formal leadership of the laboratory in 1757, after which it was headed by several other academy professors. The lab continued to serve the academy’s research until 1793 when several misfortunes, including a flood and a robbery, led to it running down. Still, the lab has had huge significance as a symbol that Russian scientists have appealed to ever since as a model for more state support. It also inspired the setting-up of other chemical laboratories, including a similar facility built at Moscow University in 1755.

For the last two and a half centuries, however, the laboratory’s allies have struggled to keep the site from becoming just real estate in a pricey St Petersburg neighbourhood. In 1793 an academician bought the land from the Academy of Sciences and rebuilt the lab as housing, although preserving its foundations and the old walls. Over the next century, a series of private owners owned the plot, again rebuilding the laboratory and associated house.

The area was levelled again during the Siege of Leningrad in the Second World War, though the lab’s foundations remained intact. After the war, the Soviet Union tried to reconstruct the lab, as did the Russian Academy of Sciences. More recently, advocates have tried to rebuild the lab in time for the 300th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Science, which takes place in 2024–2025.

All these attempts have failed. Meanwhile, ownership of the site was passed around several Russian administrative agencies, most recently to the Russian State Pedagogical University. Last March, the university put the land in the hands of a private real estate agent who advertised the site in a public notice with the statement that the land was “intended for scientific facilities”, without reference to the lab. The plot is supposed to open for bids this fall.

But scientists and historians worry about the vagueness of that phrase and are distrustful of its source. There is nothing to stop the university from succumbing to the extremely high market prices that developers would pay for its enticing location in the centre of St Petersburg.

The critical point

Money, wrote Karl Marx in his famous article on the subject, is “the confounding and confusing of all natural and human qualities”. As he saw it, money strips what it is used for of ties to human life and meaning. Monetizing Lomonosov’s lab makes us speak of it quantitatively in real-estate terms. In such language, the site is simply a flat, featureless half-acre plot of land that, one metre down, has pieces of stone that were once part of an earlier building.

It also encourages us to speak of the history of this plot as just a series of owners, buildings and events. Some might even say that we have already preserved the history of Lomonosov’s lab because much of its surviving contents are on display in a nearby museum called the Kunstkamera (or art chamber). What, therefore, could be the harm of selling the land?

The land is where Lomonosov, his spirited colleagues and students, shared experiences and techniques, made friendships and established networks

Turning the history of science into nothing more than a tale of instruments promotes the view that science is all about clever individuals who use tools to probe the world for knowledge. But the places where scientists work are integral to science too. The plot of land on the 2nd avenue of Vasilevsky Island is where Lomonosov, his spirited colleagues and students, shared experiences and techniques, made friendships and established networks.

It’s where humans, instruments, materials and funding came together in dynamic events that revealed new knowledge of how materials behave in different conditions. The lab is also historically important because it impressed academy and state authorities enough that they continued to support scientific research as essential to Russia’s future.

Sure, appreciating this dimension of science history requires more than restoring buildings. But preserving the places where science happens keeps alive important symbols of what makes science possible, then and now, in a world that needs more of it. Selling the site of Lomonosov’s lab for money amounts to repudiating the cultural value of science.

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Small leaks of radioactive material can be the death knell for large scientific facilities. It’s happened twice already. Following releases of non-hazardous amounts of tritium, the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) was forced to shut its High Flux Beam Reactor (HFBR) in 1997, while the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) had to close its National Tritium Labeling Facility in 2001.

Fortunately, things don’t always turn out badly. Consider the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago, which has for many decades been America’s premier high-energy physics research facility. In 2005, an experiment there also leaked tritium, but the way the lab handled the situation meant that nothing had to close. Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, I’ve been trying to find out why such successes happen.

Running on grace

Fermilab, which opened in 1971, has had a hugely successful history. But its relationship with the local community got off to a shaky start. In 1967, to acquire land for the lab, the State of Illinois used a US legal manoeuvre called “eminent domain” to displace homeowners, angering neighbours. More trouble came in 1988, when the US Department of Energy (DOE) considered Fermilab as a possible site for the 87 km circumference Superconducting Supercollider (SSC), which would require acquiring more land.

Some locals formed a protest group called CATCH (Citizens Against The Collider Here). It was an aggressive organization whose members accused Illinois officials of being “secretive, arrogant, and insensitive”, and of wanting to saddle the area with radiation, traffic and lower property values. While Illinois officials were making the bid to host the SSC, the lab was the focus of protests. The controversy ended when the DOE chose to site the machine in Waxahachie, Texas. (The SSC was cancelled in 1993, incomplete.)

Aware of the local anger, Fermilab decided to revamp its public relations. In 1989, it replaced its Office of Public Information with a “Department of Public Affairs” reporting to the lab director. Judy Jackson, who became the department’s head, sought professional consultants, and organized a diverse group of  community members with different backgrounds, including a CATCH founder, to examine Fermilab’s community engagement practices.

Brookhaven’s closure of the HFBR in 1997 was a wake-up call for US labs, including Fermilab itself. Aware that the reactor had been shut by a cocktail of politics, activism and media scare stories, the DOE organized a “Lessons learned” conference in Gaithersburg, Maryland, a year later. When Jackson came to the podium her first slide read simply: “Brookhaven’s experience: There but for the grace of God…”

Then, in 2005, Fermilab discovered that one of its own experiments leaked tritium.

Tritium tale

All accelerators produce tritium in particle collisions at target areas or beam dumps. Much dissipates in air, though some replaces ordinary hydrogen atoms to make tritiated water, which is hard to control. Geographically, Fermilab is fortunate, being located over almost impermeable clay. Compacted and thick, the clay’s a nuisance for gardeners and construction crews but a godsend to Fermilab, for bathtub-like structures built in it easily contain the tritium.

The target area of one experimental site – Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) – was dug in bedrock beneath the clay. Then, during routine environmental monitoring in November 2005, Fermilab staff found a (barely) measurable amount of tritium in a creek that flowed offsite. Tritium from NuMI was mixing with unexpectedly high amounts of water vapour seeping through the bedrock, creating tritiated water that went into a sump. This was being pumped out and making its way into surface water.

The idea was that employees, neighbours, the media, local officials and groups would all be informed simultaneously, so that everybody would hear the news first from Fermilab rather than other sources.

Jackson’s department drew up a plan that would see letters delivered by hand to community members from lab director Pier Oddone, who would also pen an article in the Friday 9 December edition of the daily online newspaper Fermilab Today. The idea was that employees, neighbours, the media, local officials and groups would all be informed simultaneously, so that everybody would first hear the news from Fermilab rather than other sources.

Disaster struck when a sudden snowstorm threatened to delay the letters from reaching recipients. But the lab sent staff out anyway, knowing that local residents simply had to hear of the plan before that issue of Fermilab Today. When published, it appeared as normal, with a story about a “Toys for Tots” Christmas collection, a list of lab events and the cafeteria menu (including roasted-veggie panini).

Oddone’s “Director’s corner” column was in its usual spot on the right, but attentive readers would have noticed that it had appeared a few days early (it normally came out on a Tuesday). As well as mentioning the letter that had been hand-delivered to the community, Oddone said that there had been “a small tritium release” as a result of “normal accelerator operations”, but that it was “well within federal drinking water standards”.

His column provided a link to a webpage for more information and Jackson’s phone number in her department. That web page also listed Jackson’s office phone number, and said it would link to any subsequent media coverage of the episode. Oddone’s message seemed to be appropriate publicity about a finding that was not a health or environment hazard; it was a communication essentially saying: “Here’s something that’s happening at Fermilab.”

For years Jackson marvelled at how smoothly everything turned out. Politicians were supportive, the media fair and community members were largely appreciative of the extent to which Fermilab had gone to keep them informed. “Don’t try this at home,” she’d tell people, meaning don’t try to muddle through without having a plan drawn up with the help of a consultant. “If you do it wrong, it’s worse than not doing it at all.”

The critical point

Fermilab’s successful navigation of the unexpected tritium emission cannot be traced to any one factor. But two lessons stand out from the 10 or so other episodes I’ve found around that time when major research instruments leaked tritium. One is the importance of having a strong community group that wasn’t just a token effort but a serious exercise that involved local activists. The group discouraged activist sharpshooting and political posturing, thereby allowing genuine dialogue about issues of concern.

A second lesson is what I call “quantum of response”, by which I mean that the size of one’s response must be appropriate to the threat rather than over- or underplaying it. Back in the late 1990s, the DOE had responded to the Brookhaven leak with dramatic measures – press conferences were held, statements issued and, incredibly, the lab’s contractor was fired. Instead of reassuring community members, those actions terrified many.

It’s insane to fire a contractor that had been successful for half a century because of something that posed no threat to health or the environment. All it did was suggest that something far worse was happening that the DOE wasn’t talking about. One Brookhaven activist called the leak a “canary” presaging the lab’s admission of more environmental catastrophes.

The Fermilab lesson is two decades old now. The onset of social media since then makes it easy to form and consolidate terrified people by promoting and amplifying inflammatory messages, which will be harder to address.  Moreover, tritium leaks are only one kind of episode that can spark community concerns at research laboratories.

Sometimes accelerator beams have gone awry, or experimental stations have malfunctioned in a way that releases radiation. Activists have accused accelerators at Brookhaven and CERN of possibly creating strangelets or black holes that might destroy the world. Fermilab’s current woes stemming from its recent Performance Evaluation and Measurement Plan may raise yet another set of community relations issues.

Whatever the calamity, a lab’s response should not be improvised but based on a carefully worked-out plan. In the 21st century, “God’s grace” may be a weak force. Studying previous episodes, and seeking lessons to be learned from them, is a stronger one.

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“My understanding of identity has been shattered,” mulls the protagonist in Blake Crouch’s book Dark Matter (2016). “I am one facet of an infinitely faceted being called Jason Dessen who has made every possible choice and lived every life imaginable.”

Authors, poets, writers and film-makers have long exploited the notion of paths-not-taken as a narrative ploy. Early examples include Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” (1920), H G Wells’s novel Men Like Gods (1922) and Jorge Borges’s short story “The Garden of Forking Paths” (1941).

But the “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics has turbocharged the genre, unleashing new possibilities for fiction about different choices, alternative lives and multiple worlds. Recent movies inspired by it include Another Earth (2011), Multiverse (2019), Loki (2021) and the award-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).

A fundamental principle of the many-worlds interpretation is that any contact between the different worlds is impossible. But a fundamental principle of popular culture is that it’s not, physics be damned. The beauty of using parallel worlds in fiction is that it can neatly exploit our human anxiety over the consequences of taking and having taken actions. In a sense, it reveals the God-like, world-shaping power of the human ability to choose and the depth of our innate desire to live our lives again.

As Brit Marling, co-author and star of Another Earth, told an interviewer: “Sometimes in science fiction you can get closer to the truth than if you had followed all the rules.”

Physics be damned

Quantum-inspired fictional worlds are back in the spotlight after featuring in two Apple TV+ dramas this year – Constellation and Dark Matter. Both use superposition as a device for allowing characters to take forking paths. The former was cancelled after one season, while the latter finished its season in June. The two shows illustrate what’s problematic about the genre.

In Constellation, characters feel and communicate with each other in different possible universes. The show highlights the uniqueness of the emotional ties we form and the joy or devastation we face when these links are severed or reconnected. It’s literally a haunting story where ghosts from other worlds alternately comfort and terrorize.

Dark Matter extracts somewhat more from superposition. Jason Dessen, a former physicist, has abandoned his brilliant career to spend more time with his wife, Daniela – who has also given up her career as an artist – and their child. In the alternate universe, where he did not give up his career, another Jason – let’s call him Alt-Jason – has used quantum superposition to create a “gateway to the multiverse” that “connects all possible worlds”.

Tired of fame and success, and his “intellectually stimulating but ultimately one-dimensional life”, Alt-Jason wants to take the “road not taken”. Using the gateway, he goes to Jason’s world, brutally beats Jason, sends him to Alt-Jason’s world, and assumes Jason’s role as husband and father. The book and series open with that switch; Jason has to figure out what’s happened and get back to “his” world and his family.

The characters in Dark Matter – the novel and the series – make predictable observations. Dessen, for instance remarks that “we’re a part of a much larger and stranger reality than we can possibly imagine”, and that “my identity isn’t binary…it’s multifaceted”. But the structure also makes possible imaginatively gripping scenes, such as Jason’s horrifying loneliness when he experiences seemingly insignificant things both familiar and unfamiliar, and a home that’s only “almost home”.

In one creepily intense scene, Daniela puzzles over the new quality of her love-making to the person she thinks is Jason but is actually Alt-Jason. We’re no longer like an “old married couple” but like “their first time every time”, she thinks. They smoulder with an intensity “that reminds her of the way new lovers stare into each other’s eyes when there’s still so much mystery and uncharted territory to discover”. It worries her, sort of.

Dark Matter – again, both the book and the TV series – give semi-explanations for the gateway. Thanks to quantum mechanics, scientists can put things in superposition to create worlds with an infinite number of possibilities. As the cliché goes: “Everything that can happen will happen.” People can enter superposition if they take a drug that prevents consciousness from destroying the superposition.

To enter superposition, they enter a box that uses the equivalent of what the show calls “noise-cancelling headphones” to block the intrusion of what would collapse the superposition. Once in superposition, they walk down a long corridor with an infinite number of doors leading to all possible outcomes. One’s frame of mind determines which world you enter.

The critical point

Previous Critical Point columns have provided a taxonomy of science-distorting art – “science bloopers” if you like (see columns from April 2007 and June 2007). Some distortions are well-meaning and create works that would be impossible otherwise, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Others, however, are due to inattention or stupidity. Even the title of the 1968 movie Krakatoa, East of Java is wrong (Krakatoa is west).

So are fictional works based on quantum-travel-between-worlds just examples of “harmlessly enabling distortion” (HED, done for a good purpose)? Or should we think of them as examples of “fake artistic distortion” (FAD, done for special effects without caring how science works)? It’s an interesting question especially for philosophers, who have long worried about art having to appeal to its audience’s “sense” of reality, and its tendency to reinforce that sense despite its distortions.

In a similar way, the appeal of TV series based on many-worlds interpretations depends on how agreeably and acceptably they manipulate popular preconceptions about quantum mechanics, such as about time travel, alternate worlds, the reality of superposition, and – most of all – the illusion that the fundamental structure of the world is up to us.

But wouldn’t it be more artistic to portray a universe where quantum systems are what they are – in some cases coherent systems that can decohere, but not via thought control (as in Dark Matter)? If we did that, then artists could speculate about what it’d be like to meet and even trade places with other selves without introducing fake scientific justifications. We could then try to understand if and why we would want or benefit from such identity-swapping, on both a physical and emotional level.

That might really shatter and reconfigure what it means to be human.

Robert P Crease (click link below for full bio) is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, US, where Jennifer Carter is a lecturer in philosophy

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