The Wrong Message

A press release this week said Brookhaven National Lab would mark its 50th anniversary by burying two time capsules made of "specially designed flame-sealed glass" to be preserved in "a polymer concrete vault" until the lab's 100th anniversary.

The capsules will contain items that, according to the release, "will most likely be historically interesting." Among them will be the lab's 1997 salary schedule, a piece of superconducting cable from the relativistic heavy-ion collider now under construction, some hybrid cotton and pea seeds from a biology experiment, and two bottles of Long Island wine.

Not a hint of what may instead be the lab's most enduring legacy: chemical and radioactive contamination of the groundwater, soil, and Peconic River Estuary. Will the Long Islanders who dig up those time capsules in 2047 know they were put there by a scientific community that was infamous for burying its head in the sand?