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Putin and winners of a prize for young scientists.
I took a five-day tour of Russia's leading scientific research centers. This is what I saw.
They call them the "golden brains." Perched 22 storeys high, they engulf the top floors of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) headquarters in southwest Moscow. Somehow both geometric and wildly rampageous, the copper and aluminum sculptures look like the kind of long-lost technologies that protagonists stumble across on deserted alien worlds in
Mass Effect.
On a crisp evening in late February, we stepped out of a van and walked across a plaza, lined by ornate statues and a giant metal clock. Shepherded by Asya Shepunova, a lively public relations representative for the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), a
university based in the northern suburb of Dolgoprudny, we made our way past a security checkpoint to a welcome dinner at a restaurant enclosed within the golden brains.
In tandem with the press team at
ITMO University in Saint Petersburg, Shepunova and her colleagues organized this five-day tour of Russia's two largest and most scientifically active cities. A handful of science journalists from around the world, including me - hi, I'm Becky-RSVP'd yes. A little over a month after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, we arrived in Moscow.
Comment: All these ridiculous schemes based on the global warming hoax. Are these people serious??