Will this help with the ME peace process? Will it change any attitudes? Or is this just Kumbaya wishfulness? https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...0e4656c22aa_story.html?utm_term=.389214f8e085 Health & Science Scientists from enemy nations create a beacon for peace in the Middle East By Joel Achenbach May 15 at 6:00 AM Technical Director Erhard Huttel, from Germany, in the inner storage ring of the SESAME facility. (Dean Calma/International Atomic Energy Agency) They’ve built a machine in the desert in the heart of the Middle East. Israelis will use it — and so will Iranians, Jordanians, Turks, Pakistanis and many others. Scientists from countries recently at war or without diplomatic relations will work side by side — Muslims, Jews, Christians and atheists sharing the pursuit of knowledge. This may seem an impossible dream, and indeed the project took decades to materialize and often came close to disintegration. As the saying goes: The difficult we do immediately;the impossible takes longer. The project is called SESAME — as in “Open, Sesame!” — and it is an acronym for Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East. The machine functions a bit like an X-ray. About 50 of these “light sources” exist around the world, and they are prized among researchers for their versatility. They can reveal the atomic structure of matter, making them useful for everything from biology to chemistry to archaeology. The new machine is in Jordan, about a 45-minute drive from the capital of Amman. The leaders of the project and many dignitaries will formally dedicate the facility in a ceremony on Tuesday, with Jordan’s King Abdullah II presiding. “It’s a beacon, one lighthouse, in this era where there is killing, beheadings, gassing. We are showing a different way,” said Eliezer Rabinovici, 70, a physics professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the founders of the endeavor. The project has been raked by political and financial crosswinds. The internationalism at the core of SESAME had to overcome fierce nationalistic passions. Security remains a concern. But SESAME shows the centripetal force of the global scientific enterprise. Scientists speak the common language of mathematics, and they search for truths that are almost invariably universal, and not defined by political or cultural boundaries. Science is arguably the most international human endeavor; the only thing that comes close is the Olympic Games, which happen for a couple of weeks every two years and are centered on competition rather than collaboration. That is one reason the scientific community in the United States was so outraged by President Trump’s proposed travel ban affecting a number of Muslim-majority countries. Scientists depend increasingly on elaborate machines, such as particle accelerators, supercomputers and space telescopes — shared tools on a colossal scale. The premier example of this is CERN, the research facility outside Geneva where physicists used a particle accelerator to search for theoretical Higgs boson (found!).CERN is run by 28 member or associate states. But science is not immune to political turmoil. SESAME was roiled in 2010 when two Iranian scientists with connections to the project were killed in separate incidents. This was part of several attacks on Iranian scientists perceived to have connections to Iran’s nuclear program. The government in Tehran accused Israel and the United States of involvement in the attacks, which both countries denied. The SESAME council later issued a condemnation of the assassinations. Tensions also flared at a meeting held in 2010 shortly after Israeli commandos attacked a Turkish-owned ship carrying aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, recalled Khaled Toukan, chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission. “We were on the verge of withering away,” he said. “It has not been easy. But we made it.”
