Archive for November 9th, 2010
Obama: “Indonesia is where many of the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century come together”
The US and Indonesia are to expand co-operation on economic issues, security and climate change, the presidents of both countries have said.
US President Barack Obama said the US and Indonesia would expand trade relationships and increase prosperity.
He criticised the recent elections in Burma and called for the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Mr Obama, who lived in Indonesia in his youth, will also speak at South East Asia’s largest mosque while in Jakarta.
The speech, to be delivered on Wednesday, will be his most high-profile attempt to engage the Islamic world since a landmark speech in Cairo in June 2009.
However, the White House says the president will probably have to cut short his visit by a few hours because of concerns over volcanic ash from Mount Merapi, which could disrupt flights.
Speaking in Jakarta, Mr Obama said he had worked hard to repair ties with Muslim communities but warned that some “misunderstandings and mistrust” were likely to remain.
In a wide-ranging news conference with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Mr Obama also criticised Israel’s plan to build apartments for Jewish settlers in disputed East Jerusalem.
“This kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations,” Mr Obama said.
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians resumed in September after a break of almost two years but were suspended after a few weeks when a freeze on the building of Jewish settlements expired.
Mr Obama also referred to his childhood times in Jakarta, saying: “I will tell you, though, that I barely recognised it as I was driving down the streets. The only thing that was there when I first moved to Jakarta was Sarinah (a shopping mall). Now it’s one of the shorter buildings on the road.”
Memories:
Mr Obama said Indonesia had “figured out how to create a genuine democracy” with a hugely diverse population.
Washington and Jakarta would also work together on climate change, he said.
Mr Obama has twice postponed this visit because of domestic problems.
He is also visiting at a time when Indonesia is trying to recover from two natural disasters – the eruption of Mt Merapi, which has killed more than 130 people, and a tsunami that struck the Mentawai islands, killing more than 400 people and forcing thousands into emergency shelters.
The trip will provide little time for nostalgia in a country where the president spent four years as a boy with his late mother. Mr Obama attended schools in Jakarta between the ages of six and 10.
However, he did manage to greet officials who met him at the airport with a few words in Indonesian.
He added: “It’s wonderful to be here although I have to tell you that when you visit a place that you spent time in as a child, as the president it’s a little disorientating.”
The first atomic bomb exploded at a test site in July 1945
Forensic analysis of the debris left after a nuclear explosion could yield crucial evidence about the composition and the origin of the bomb, say scientists.
A US team examined Trinitite, the glassy ground debris from the first-ever nuclear test that the US Army conducted in 1945 in New Mexico.
They used advanced analytical techniques to reveal details about the materials used to construct the bomb.
The study appears in the journal PNAS.
The first atomic bomb exploded in the early hours of 16 July, 1945, in the desert near Alamogordo Air Base. Code-named “Trinity”, the detonation was just a test conducted far away from any settlements.
Just weeks later, in the final stages of World War II, two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Between 90,000-166,000 people died in Hiroshima and some 60,000-80,000 in Nagasaki. About half of the deaths happened on the day of the bombing.
Tracing the responsible
Now, many consider the threat of a nuclear attack by terrorists to be very real. Such an attack could potentially wipe out whole cities.
But if someone does ever undertake such an attack, could the culprits behind the bomb ever be found?
The current study’s lead author Albert Fahey, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Nist) in Gaithersburg, US, seems to think so.
“Prior to this, pretty much everyone assumed that everything would be vaporised, it would all be homogeneous and we would have no idea whatsoever where this thing came from,” he told BBC News.
“Turns out that’s not true.”
The researcher explained that his team used nuclear forensic analysis to study a little piece of trinitite that he obtained from a material collector over the internet.
The scientists were surprised to find that their “microanalysis” techniques identified the secondary materials used to build the device that went off at Trinity site.
This information, in turn, can be used to trace the bomb’s origin, he said.
“Prior to this study, people didn’t realise that other components of the bomb could be discerned from looking at ground debris and seeing what’s associated [with it],” said Dr Fahey.
“But there are some distinctive signatures that were in the bomb other than fission products and plutonium, and that gives you hope that you can get some additional information out of it – like where it was made.”
Other materials
The researchers write in the paper that contrary to the nuclear material that would be likely to come from wherever a person could get it, “whether it was submitted by a state that’s sympathetic or they got it on the black market”, other materials would likely be of local origin.
“The materials that go to make the rest of the bomb, to produce the critical mass, [would be] obtained from local sources,” said Dr Fahey.
“Perhaps if it’s a gun-type device, an artillery barrel, maybe it was put in a shipping container so maybe there were bricks around it.
“And they’ll have records associated with them. For example, if someone were to use a lead tamper, then the isotopic composition of the lead would pinpoint or at least narrow down the number of lead mines it could come from.”
The site for the first atomic bomb test was code-named TrinityRichard Lindstrom, also of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a co-author of the study, told BBC News that the study was a crucial first step to help identify those behind any future nuclear terrorist attack.
“The interest that the team are trying to stir up is that here is this ancient material from 1945 that contains a tremendous amount of information that maybe we should go back and try to understand a little bit better – just in case we ever should try to infer the composition and source of a nuclear explosion from the debris of a terrorist event.
“Just from this random sample of trinitite we can draw a surprising number of conclusions about the device.” <!–94e02828954b42f084dc3171ef02ee15–>
The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a “mini-Big Bang” by smashing together lead ions instead of protons.
The scientists working at the enormous machine on Franco-Swiss border achieved the unique conditions on 7 November.
The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun.
The LHC is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border near Geneva.
Up until now, the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator – which is run by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) – has been colliding protons, in a bid to uncover mysteries of the Universe’s formation.
THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER
- The LHC is smashing together particles in a bid to unlock the secrets of formation of our Universe
- It is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Geneva
- The collider is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border
- The giant tunnel is located an average of 100m underground
- The LHC is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator
- The circumference of the LHC is 26 659 m, with a total of 9300 magnets inside
- The magnets are cooled to an operating temperature of -271.3°C (1.9 K) – colder than deep space
Proton collisions could help spot the elusive Higgs boson particle and signs of new physical laws, such as a framework called supersymmetry.
But for the next four weeks, scientists at the LHC will concentrate on analysing the data obtained from the lead ion collisions.
This way, they hope to learn more about the plasma the Universe was made of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.
One of the accelerator’s experiments, ALICE, has been specifically designed to smash together lead ions, but the ATLAS and Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments have also switched to the new mode.
‘Strong force‘
David Evans from the University of Birmingham, UK, is one of the researchers working at ALICE.
He said that the collisions obtained were able to generate the highest temperatures and densities ever produced in an experiment.
“We are thrilled with the achievement,” said Dr Evans.
One of the lead-ion collisions at the LHC“This process took place in a safe, controlled environment, generating incredibly hot and dense sub-atomic fireballs with temperatures of over ten trillion degrees, a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun.
“At these temperatures even protons and neutrons, which make up the nuclei of atoms, melt resulting in a hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma.”
Quarks and gluons are sub-atomic particles – some of the building blocks of matter. In the state known as quark-gluon plasma, they are freed of their attraction to one another. This plasma is believed to have existed just after the Big Bang.
He explained that by studying the plasma, physicists hoped to learn more about the so-called strong force – the force that binds the nuclei of atoms together and that is responsible for 98% of their mass.
After the LHC finishes colliding lead ions, it will go back to smashing together protons once again.
The ALICE experiment has been designed specifically for lead ion collisions- In: World News
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US President Barack Obama has arrived in Jakarta for a brief visit to Indonesia, set to focus on trade and support for democratic progress.
He is also expected to use the visit to reach out to the Muslim world, with a visit to South East Asia’s largest mosque – the Istiqlal.
This visit to the world’s most populous Muslim nation is the latest stop on his 10-day Asian tour.
Mr Obama is also revisiting a country where he spent four years as a boy.
However, the White House says the president will probably have to cut short his visit by a few hours because of concerns over volcanic ash from Mount Merapi which could disrupt flights.
The US president is expected to praise the economic growth and democratic progress in Indonesia in his meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
The pair are also likely to sign a “comprehensive partnership” pact they agreed a year ago, taking in issues of trade, security, education, investment and climate change.
Changed mood
Mr Obama’s speechwriter and deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said: “We’ve had this focus on Asia and on emerging powers and on democracies as kind of cornerstones of the kind of strategic orientation of the United States in the 21st Century.
“India fits firmly in that category and so does Indonesia.”
A street artist in a Jakarta store displays a picture welcoming Mr ObamaSecurity will be a key issue, with Mr Obama sure to encourage the Indonesian administration to maintain a strong policy of tackling Islamist militancy.
Indonesia suffered one of the deadliest insurgent attacks, when 202 people were killed by bombs on the resort island of Bali in October 2002.
US officials have played down Mr Obama’s speech at the Istiqlal Mosque.
But analysts say this will be his most high-profile address to the Muslim world since the Cairo speech.
Islamic affairs analyst Roger Hardy says that speech was well received, with its offer of “a new beginning” based on “mutual interest and mutual respect”.
But since then, he says, the mood has changed.
Recent polls show that, in key parts of the Muslim world, Mr Obama’s credibility has slumped, and this may be a chance to return to some of the themes he set out in Cairo.
Indonesia is trying to recover from two natural disastersMr Obama has twice postponed this visit because of domestic problems.
He is also visiting at a time when Indonesia is trying to recover from two natural disasters – the eruption of Mt Merapi, which has killed more than 130 people, and the tsunami that struck the Mentawai islands, killing more than 400 people and forcing thousands into emergency shelters.
The trip will provide little time for nostalgia in a country where he spent four years as a boy with his late mother, attending schools in Jakarta between the ages of six and 10.
Mr Obama remains popular in the country but may have to wait until next year’s East Asia summit for any Indonesian leisure time.
Mr Obama spent three days on his first stop, India, signing $10bn (£6.2bn) in new trade deals and backing India’s ambition for permanent membership of the UN Security Council.
After Indonesia, Mr Obama will visit South Korea and Japan.
Yossi Fadhli World News and Entertainment 