Java 20xfaster then Python !!??

[Axel Kowald]

Hi everybody,

I just had a look at these very detailed benchmark tests, 
http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/, and I was surprised to see that 
often java is 20 times faster than python !!

How can this be? Both languages interprete bytecode. Maybe because java 
has a JIT compiler ??
Is there any hope that python might become faster in future releases ?

Any ideas ?

              Axel Kowald