There's a new light of hope in the Middle East. It's a scientific experiment called SESAME - intended to do world-class science and bring together researchers from divided nations. Its members include Palestine and Israel, Pakistan and Iran, Jordan, Egypt, and more. First conceived in the late 1990s, it has just seen the first spark of electricity flow through its high-vacuum steel pipes, last week, and first science should follow soon. The BBC’s Roland Pease paid his second visit to the SESAME campus just as the final pieces were being put in place, and met some of the key players, and heard their hopes.
Picture: Sesame with presenter Roland Pease and Herman Winnick, copyright Noemi Caraban
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0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
0:03.0 | The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, |
0:07.0 | go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts. broadcasts. Something special happened last week on a small campus about an hour's drive north of Amman Jordan. |
0:34.7 | An experiment came to life there after almost 20 years of development. |
0:39.2 | An experiment called Sesame. I'm Brolin Pease and I've been to Sesame before for another edition of |
0:51.3 | discovery from the BBC nine years ago when only a few parts |
0:55.8 | had been put together but even then the researchers there knew it would shine a new light on |
1:01.8 | the Middle East. |
1:06.6 | We are going to do beautiful science with many different people from different cultures, different countries from Israel, |
1:17.0 | Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, myself, I am from Algeria and France. The idea is to work together and the science is |
1:26.2 | really one tool to bring people working together. In 2006, for example, the war was there in Lebanon and we had Israeli scientists sitting next to Iranian scientists |
1:45.6 | sitting next to the Palestinian scientists. One scientist said together they |
1:49.9 | talk science, they talk logic, they are on a high level, and indeed this facility definitely |
1:56.6 | can bring people together and can send a constructive message for harmony, for bringing people together and pushing forward the development of this part of the world. |
2:07.0 | People we are interested in the science, okay? So they do not care who is in and who is art. |
2:18.0 | And maybe you will find scientists from the Middle East and Israel is the same experiment. They are joining the same experiment. |
2:24.4 | I worked in the United States, part of the group that I was, they were Jewish and Christians and Indians. |
2:30.6 | So different religions, different ethics doesn't matter. |
2:35.0 | And when I returned last month to see the machine near completion, the enthusiasm lived on. |
2:41.0 | Isn't it nice to be just a part of a huge community of different cultures and religions |
2:48.1 | and point of views and motivations, but you are still all working for one project. |
2:54.0 | For me is exciting, I think also for others. |
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