Munich

The scientific commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has formally endorsed the creation of a synchrotron radiation facility in the Middle East.

The facility, planned for construction near Amman in Jordan, will operate under the auspices of UNESCO, whose general assembly, currently sitting in Paris, is expected to approve the plan on 3 November.

Pipe dream: Germany's donation of BESSY I led to the creation of the SESAME project. Credit: BESSY

The International Centre for Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications for the Middle East, known as SESAME, is a joint project by Armenia, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey. The idea was born in 1999, when Germany offered to donate its dismantled BESSY I synchrotron to the Middle East.

The agreement with UNESCO is a big step forward for the project. UNESCO will provide the institutional framework for hiring staff and for all contractual arrangements between member states, as it did 50 years ago for CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory in Geneva.

Jordan will pay US$6million for a new building, and the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency have promised to support the installation and modernization of the German synchrotron. The SESAME member states must cover the rest, including the running costs.

Synchrotrons produce high-quality X-rays by circulating electrons around a ring at high speed. Basic researchers from many disciplines use them to study the molecular structures of organic and inorganic matter.

“In the current political situation, scientific exchange in the Middle East is even more important than before,” says Howard Moore, a spokesman for UNESCO's science division. “This will become a state-of-the-art machine,” says Dieter Einfeld, technical director of SESAME, who is overseeing the training of 20 scientists from the region to build and operate SESAME.

Operation could begin within as little as three years, says Herwig Schopper, former director general of CERN and head of SESAME's interim council. But the synchrotron must first be shipped to Jordan and upgraded to achieve higher energies and the short wavelengths required for structural biology. The storage ring is to be lengthened to 120 metres in circumference, and equipped with magnets to enhance its performance.