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the rocket had launched and claims by some that the whole event was actually staged, the mission commander Zhai Zhigang did become the first ever Chinese citizen to carry out a spacewalk. Following on from the quite phenomenal Beijing Olympics, the third quarter of the year was a pretty good one for China.

The extra-vehicular activity (EHA) lasted for about 15 minutes and whilst outside the vehicle, attached using an umbilical cable, one of the astronauts managed to retrieve a sample of solid lubricant before they were launched. Each of the astronauts came from difficult backgrounds and having always dreamed of flying to space, were able to achieve their goals. This was a truly amazing achievement which will only boost the space faring confidence of the Chinese.

A short mention needs to go to the thought to be endangered lowland gorilla. On a completely different level to the Big Bang and spacewalks, it was discovered that the species' number is far higher than scientists had originally thought, as much as double in fact. The swamps and forests in the Republic of Congo are now filled with as many as 125,000 gorillas surveys by the Wildlife Conservation Society have told.

Over in California there was a discovery that many people have dreamed of for years; an invisibility cloak. That's right, experts at the University of California used complex physics and optics to create something that we've only ever seen in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. However, unlike this the movies this was totally real.

Here comes the science bit. Using nanowires grown inside a porous aluminium tube to create a sheeting 10 times thinner than a piece of paper, they wrapped up an object in material and managed to bend light waves behind it, making it effectively invisible. Of course, this is still at a very experimental stage and I'd imagine the costs of such a powerful device are astronomical (economically and for humanity). It would be quite frustrating for Bob Switzer, the inventor of the fluorescent jacket to see that we're now trying to make ourselves disappear.

There have been a number of other impressive scientific discoveries in 2008 such as finding the oldest nuclear family in Germany, the mapping of the human genome, the finding of a North Pole on Mars and who could forget the fact that only 25% of Americans could be defined as scientifically literate.' However, the achievements of the Large Hadron Collider, China space mission and invisibility cloak are the ones which stand out the most for me and deserve their accolade as the most significant of 2008.

Learn more about this author, Marc Steel.
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