A synchrotron under construction in the Middle East brings hope for both science and peace.
“It’s like a parallel universe,” says Eliezer Rabinovici, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, of the complex of buildings in the Jordanian desert near Amman. Rabinovici is a string theorist, so he knows a thing or two about parallel universes.
The Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (Sesame) project, modeled on the Cern particle physics lab in Switzerland, is a unique scientific collaboration in the middle of a politically fraught region. The nine members—Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, Palestine and Turkey—are not natural allies, indeed this is the only organization outside of the UN that can count both Israel and Iran as members. Read more in Materials Today.