Gagarin statue unveiled in London

14 July 2011 Last updated at 09:12 GMT By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth on 12 April 1961 A statue has been unveiled in London to celebrate the first spaceman - Yuri Gagarin.

The figure, which has been placed just off The Mall, next to Admiralty Arch, features the cosmonaut in his flight suit and standing on a globe.

Gagarin shook the world when it was announced on 12 April 1961 that he had circled the Earth in a spacecraft.

A host of dignitaries were present for the unveiling, including the cosmonaut's daughter, Elena Gagarina.

"The 12th of April 1961 was one of the most remarkable days in history, uniting all people in all countries on all continents," said Gagarina, who is the current director of the Kremlin Museums.

"I express my great gratitude to all Londoners and all the people of the UK," she added just before the unveiling.

Others in attendance included Vladimir Popovkin, the new head of the Russian space agency; and Sergei Krikalev, the most experienced spaceman in history having logged more than 800 days in orbit.

After circling the planet, Gagarin became an international superstar and undertook a world tour.

He was invited to Britain by the National Union of Foundrymen and it was at Admiralty Arch that he met the then Prime Minister Harold MacMillan.

The 3.5m-high (12ft) zinc-alloy figure is a gift from Roscosmos to the British Council, the organisation that represents the UK culturally abroad. The Council has its HQ just metres from the Arch, making the statue's setting doubly significant.

The figure is a copy of one sited in the town of Lubertsy, just outside Moscow, where Gagarin trained as a foundry worker in his mid-teens.

Continue reading the main story Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth in 108-minute flight on 12 April 1961 Became instant celebrity and toured the worldBut he never returned to space, and instead trained Soviet cosmonautsHe died seven years later in a training flightThe original was made in 1984 to celebrate what would have been the cosmonaut's 50th birthday - he died in a plane crash aged just 34 years.

Westminster City Council has granted a 12-month licence for the statue and its Portland stone plinth.

It stands facing Captain Cook on the opposite side of The Mall, and close to the statue of Navigation seated in the wall of Admiralty Arch. The pedestal of Captain Cook is inscribed with the words "circumnavigator of the globe".

Roscosmos Popovkin said: "Russians are very proud that [Gagarin] was Russian, but if you look at it more philosophically - he was a delegate from the whole world to space.

"He reminds us how we must be together in the exploration of space."

The statue is part of a series of cultural events to mark the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's historic flight.

These include an exhibition at the Council's headquarters on the life of the cosmonaut and the early Soviet space programme.

The Queen, who met Gagarin on his world tour in '61, was represented at the statue unveiling by their Royal Highnesses Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.

Gagarin went into darkness behind the Earth over the Pacific. He saw the Sun rise as he was moving over the South Atlantic Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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'Most fearsome predator' unveiled

8 July 2011 Last updated at 04:42 GMT By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News Richard Edmonds on the scariest animal to have ever lived in our oceans

A skull belonging to one of the largest "sea monsters" ever unearthed is being unveiled to the public.

The beast, which is called a pliosaur, has been described as the most fearsome predator the Earth has seen.

The fossil was found in Dorset, but it has taken 18 months to remove the skull from its rocky casing, revealing the monster in remarkable detail.

Scientists suspect the creature, which is on show at the Dorset County Museum, may be a new species or even genus.

Richard Edmonds, Dorset County Council's earth science manager for the Jurassic Coast, said: "This is amazing. We saw this fossil initially as a pile of bones - and slowly, after a lot of hard work, it has come together.

"We are now told this skull is 95% complete, and probably one of the largest and certainly one of the most well-preserved and complete pliosaurs ever found anywhere in the world."

The 155-million-year-old fossil was discovered by local collector Kevan Sheehan between 2003 and 2008 as it gradually tumbled out of the cliffs near Weymouth.

He told BBC News: "It was sheer luck - I was sitting on the beach, and saw three pieces. I had no idea what they were, but I proceeded to drag them back. Then over several years, I'd go back every year and find a new piece. I'm a beach magpie."

Pliosaurs were the top predators of the oceans

At first it more closely resembled huge lumps of rock than a marine monster, but a lengthy preparation process that has been carried out by fossil expert Scott Moore-Faye has revealed the fine details of the fossil.

Looking somewhat like a crocodile on steroids, it is now easy to see the power of this "biting machine": pliosaurs, which lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods were the top predators of the oceans.

On show now are its eye sockets, perched upon the top of its head, revealing how it would have fixed its stare on any passing prey; the openings that held its it immensely powerful jaw muscles, allowing it to crunch down on anything that crossed its path; and the huge holes, running all the way down its snout, that contained its giant, razor-sharp teeth to help finish the meal off.

When the fossil was first found, it was covered in rocky debris

Palaeontologist Richard Forrest said: "This is an iconic specimen - one of the most exciting we have seen in years.

"It was probably the most fearsome predator that ever lived. Standing in front of the skull you can imagine this enormous beast staring straight back at you, fixing you with its binocular vision, and attacking. Just thinking about it raises the hairs on the back of your neck."

Its bulky body, which would have been powered through the water with four paddle-like limbs, has never been found - and may not even have fossilised.

But new estimates from scientists, based on the 2.4m-long skull, suggest that the predator would have measured between 15-18m from tip to tail.

Biggest beast?

Currently, the owner of the title of world's biggest sea monster is tricky to ascertain, as it is rare to find a complete fossil.

The pliosaur from Dorset is big - but perhaps not the biggest

But pieces of potentially larger specimens have been found in the brick pits of Oxfordshire, and the skull of a species of pliosaur called Kronosaurus, from Australia, could be up to 3m (10ft) long. Recent finds in Svalbard, such as the aptly named "Monster" and "Predator X", as well as the "Monster of Aramberri", found in Mexico are also contenders.

However, scientists say that having a skull that is only missing the tip of its snout and a small piece of its jaw, gives them a rare chance to get a glimpse into the life of this ancient animal.

CT scans carried out by a team at the School of Engineering Sciences University of Southampton, which probe the fossil using X-rays, are now being studied to assess whether this creature is new to science.

Richard Edmonds said: "I've looked at some of the papers of described animals, and it looks different: it is much more massive, much more robust.

The fossil is now going on display at Dorset County Museum

"But to determine whether it is anything new is a whole study in its own right. We'll have to go away, carefully compared to the existing species.

"But I wouldn't be surprised if in a year's time, we are standing here and looking at something that is new to science."

The fossil, which was purchased for ?20,000 by the Dorset County Museum using Heritage Lottery Funds, with half of the money going to the collector and half to the landowner, is now going on public display. Sir David Attenborough is carrying out the opening ceremony.

David Tucker, Dorset County Museums Adviser said: "Our initial expectations have been more than met and the creature looks absolutely fabulous and we doubt whether there is a more complete pliosaur skull anywhere in the world.

"It is amazing to have the largest, most complete skull of the most powerful predator to live on Earth on display on the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site, the home of the science of palaeontology"

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Acoustic cloaking device unveiled

24 June 2011 Last updated at 16:14 GMT By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News Reflections of sound off a surface (top), off an object on it (middle) and off a cloaked object (bottom) Scientists have shown off a "cloaking device" that makes objects invisible - to sound waves.

Such acoustic cloaking was proposed theoretically in 2008 but has only this year been put into practice.

Described in Physical Review Letters, the approach borrows many ideas from attempts to "cloak" objects from light.

It uses simple plastic sheets with arrays of holes, and could be put to use in making ships invisible to sonar or in acoustic design of concert halls.

Much research has been undertaken toward creating Harry Potter-style "invisibility cloaks" since the feasibility of the idea was first put forward in 2006.

Those approaches are mostly based on so-called metamaterials, man-made materials with properties that do not occur in nature. The metamaterials are designed such that they force light waves to travel around an object; to an observer, it is as if the object were not there.

But researchers quickly found out that the mathematics behind bending these light waves, called transformation optics, could also be applied to sound waves.

"Fundamentally, in terms of hiding objects, it's the same - how anything is sensed is with some kind of wave and you either hear or see the effect of it," said Steven Cummer of Duke University. "But when it comes to building the materials, things are very different between acoustics and electromagnetics.

"The thing you need to engineer into the materials is very different behaviour in different directions that the wave travels through it," he told BBC News.

In 2008, Dr Cummer first described the theory of acoustic cloaking in an article in Physical Review Letters, and earlier this year a group from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrated the first practical use of the theory in an article in the same journal.

That work showed acoustic invisibility in a shallow layer of water, at ultrasound frequencies above those we can hear.

Now, Dr Cummer and his colleagues have shown off an acoustic cloaking technique that works in air, for audible frequencies between one and four kilohertz - corresponding to two octaves on the higher half of a piano.

The cloaking shell is made of easily-manufactured sheets of plastic with holes through them

It works by using stacked sheets of plastic with regular arrays of holes through them. The exact size and placement of the holes on each sheet, and the spacing between the sheets, has a predictable effect on incoming sound waves.

When placed on a flat surface, the stack redirects the waves such that reflected waves are exactly as they would be if the stack were not there at all.

That means that an object under the stack - in the team's experiments, a block of wood about 10cm long - would not "hear" the sound, and any attempts to locate the object using sound waves would not find it.

"How the sound reflects off this reflecting surface with this composite object on it - which is pretty big and has a cloaking shell on it - really reflects... just like a flat surface does," Dr Cummer said.

Hole poking

Ortwin Hess, a director of Imperial College London's Centre for Plasmonics and Metamaterials, called the work "a really remarkable experimental demonstration".

"It shows very nicely that although acoustic and electromagnetic waves are very different in nature, the powers of transformation optics and transformation acoustics are [similar] - I'm quite pleased that there's activity on both ends."

Professor Hess pointed out that the demonstration was for very directed sound waves, and only in two dimensions, but the most notable aspect of the approach was its simplicity.

"It's almost like someone could take a pencil and poke holes in a particular way in the plastic," he told BBC News.

"It's a bit more challenging for three dimensions. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be possible but it won't be just an afternoon's work."

The work shows that an object can be hidden from sonar, and protected from incoming sound, but the same principles could be applied in the other direction - that is, containing or directing the sound within a space, for instance in soundproofing a studio or fine-tuning the acoustics of a concert hall.

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