How many girls are in this image?

It seems simple enough, how many girls are in this image?

Yet people are freaking out online as they argue about the number of people actually in the shot.

As with the infamous dress, this Instagram post has taken a life of its own becoming a viral sensation with over 17,400 likes since it was uploaded last week.

We have Swiss photographer Tiziana Vergari (@tizzia) to thank for this latest head-scratching viral snap. She originally posted the image as a contribution to Instagram's weekend hashtag project, a series where the platform sets a weekly challenge for users around a theme.

Last week's topic, #WHPidentity, asked the Instagram community to share images and video "celebrating individuality."

But, the 'optical illusion' of seeing a row of the same faces repeated has caused confusion.

It seems no one can agree. Is it 13? Or 3? Or 2 sets of twins? Or something else entirely?

One user left baffled by the snap resorts to focusing on the little details posting: "Four, two of the girls have bracelets on plus the eye line is different on two of the girls."

But using that same logic, another says: "I see 6 girls when you look at the bracelets."

Vergari, meanwhile, has confirmed that the photograph she took features -- drum roll please -- two sisters looking into a mirror.

Despite this, users continue to debate the number of girls and how the "optical illusion" was captured in the first place.

Looks like this one will continue to attract thousands of comments as the debate rages on.

CNN

Gupta family defends allegations of wielding undue influence through its links to President Jacob Zuma

The family took out two pages in a newspaper it owns to deny the allegations and respond to criticism.

Deputy Finance Minister Mcebesi Jonas has said that he was offered the top job by a member of the Gupta family.

This has led to increasing pressure on President Zuma.

"As the global economic slowdown began to bite, the family became the scapegoat for every calamity and misfortune that South Africa has faced," the Guptas said in a statement, carried in the local New Age newspaper.

The office of the country's anti-corruption watchdog, known as the Public Protector, has said it is considering whether to investigate the involvement of the Gupta family in state affairs.

Questioned by the opposition in parliament on Thursday about Mr Jonas' allegation, Mr Zuma said: "I'm in charge of the government. There is no minister who was ever appointed by the Guptas."

Mr Zuma's presidency has been marred by allegations of corruption, cronyism and incompetence, amid a worsening economic situation.

Last year, South Africa was hit by a wave of xenophobic violence against African migrants.

A senior governing party official warned on Thursday that the country risked turning into a "mafia state".

Gwede Mantashe is the third most powerful person in the governing African National Congress (ANC), and his remarks suggest Mr Zuma may be losing the confidence of influential members of the party as well, correspondents say.

Senior ANC officials are meeting this weekend and they may examine Mr Zuma's relationship with the Guptas.

The Guptas, who arrived in South Africa from India in 1993, have huge interests in computers, air travel, energy, and technology.

In 2013, there was an outcry after a private jet carrying guests to the wedding of a Gupta family member was allowed to land at a South African military air force base in Pretoria.

BBC

Trump again downgrade America

The 69-year-old business mogul told a gathering in Salt Lake City, Utah on Friday that America has now become a "third world country" as compared to infrastructures in China and Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

"We have become a third world country, folks!," Trump told supporters at an election rally.

"If you go to places like Dubai, China, you look at the roads, at the rail roads, they have the bullet trains that go 100s of miles an hour. And if you go to New York, they're like 100 years ago," he said.

Trump pledged to change things if he is elected president in the November election.

"We are going to bring wealth back again because our country is a poor country. We have a deficit that you cannot believe. We're sitting on a bubble, very dangerous bubble. We are sitting on a big fat ugly bubble. At some point unless we act quickly and smartly, it is going to explode. You need the right people. We have the wrong people now," he said.

Trump's election campaign in Utah was the first after his victories in three States of Florida, Illinois and North Carolina on Tuesday.

The US presidential primary is due to be held in Utah, Arizona and American Samoa on March 22, which altogether have more than 100 delegates.

Trump now leads the delegate count with 678, followed by Texas Senator Ted Cruz (423) and Ohio Governor John Kasich (143). He needs 1,237 delegates to win the GOP nomination.

Trump, who has never held elected office, is currently leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination. His campaign has been marked by controversial statements, including disparaging remarks about women, Mexican immigrants and Muslims.

The army had significantly reduced Boko Haram's ability to carry out big attacks - Information minister

Nigeria is on top of its security problems and Boko Haram has been hobbled ahead of elections in the oil-rich River State region, according to information minister Lai Mohammed. 

Mohammed said the army had significantly reduced Boko Haram's ability to carry out big attacks, just days after a suspected suicide attack by the group on a mosque left 22 worshippers dead in the northeastern Maiduguri city.

"The government is on top of the situation in terms of security and I think Nigeria has done really well," Mohammed said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Saturday.

"The Boko Haram insurgency has been massively decimated to the extent that it is no longer in the position to carry out spectacular attacks."

Referring to the attack in Maiduguri, Mohammed said there was a difference between lone-wolf attacks and large-scale ones.

"Before these villagers (in Maiduguri) were under the control of Boko Haram insurgents ... today they have been dislodged, now they're attacking soft targets, which is what happens with a insurgency on its way out."

Mohammed also told Al Jazeera that his government saw the current low oil-prices as an opportunity to diversify its economy. Nigeria has proven oil reserves of more than 37bn barrels and a daily output of more than 2m, according to OPEC.

In February, it entered talks with the World Bank for a loan to shore up its finances after oil prices fell to below $30 a barrel.

The current price of per barrel stands at just above $40, still significantly lower than average prices in 2014 of above $110.

Mohammed became information minister after President Muhammadu Buhari won elections last year.

(Al Jazeera)

Kirikiri Terminal designated as regional port for Sealink project

The Nigeria Export- Import Bank (NEXIM) has requested for the designation of the Kirikiri Terminal in Lagos as the regional port for the Sealink project of the West and Central Africa sub-region.

The Technical Adviser to the Managing Director of NEXIM, Mr Hope Yongo, made the disclosure in a paper presented at the Sub-regional Workshop on Transport Costs and Connectivity of African countries held in Abuja.

In a copy of the paper made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Lagos, Yongo said the status of the terminal would be upgraded for Container Weight Verification in line with the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention.

He said that the Regional Sealink project was aimed at putting in place moderate transport costs for shippers in West and Central African sub-region.

Yongo said that there should be provision of dedicated regional maritime services to promote connectivity and trade frequency.

He said that there should be facilitation of formal and recorded trade prospects and improvement of trade within the sub-region.

"Broadening trade prospects and improving market access for regional goods and services,’’ Yongo said.

The NEXIM chief canvassed cargo support from all member countries and encouraged both private and maritime organisations to support and invest in the regional project.

He said that Messrs Marine Services and Supply Company Ltd. would deploy three ships for the pilot scheme of the Regional Sealink project.

"This is upon confirmation of Notice of Readiness (NOR) from Sealink Promotion Company Ltd.,’’ the NEXIM chief said.

According to Yongo, the Regional Sealink Consortium is proposing ways of bridging infrastructure gap to facilitate trade.

He described the project as an`` integrated maritime logistics services; warehousing facilities with container handling and weighing; deepening coastal maritime activities; and inland waterways’’.

Yongo said that the Sealink project was born out of highest comparative international transport costs and excessive transit time, making
intra-regional trade non-competitive.

He added that West and Central African transport and logistics costs were one of the highest in the world.

According to him, there is absence of dedicated safe and modern fleet to encourage and facilitate Atlantic Short-Sea Trade along the West and Central African sub-region.

"There is inadequate infrastructure among member states and non-tariff measures are barriers to increased intra-regional trade, ’’ Yongo said.

He noted that ECOWAS trade in the past one decade grew from 4.7 million tonnes to 13.2 million tonnes without comparative increase in transport infrastructure.

Yongo also said that there had been low level of African container traffic; less than one per cent of total world container traffic of over 400 million containers.

The Sealink project has been endorsed and financially supported by the ECOWAS Commission for road shows.

It is also being technically assisted by the Maritime Organisation of West and Central Africa (MOWCA)

NAN reports that the project also has the technical and financial support of the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC) with Equitorial Guinea and Sao Tome |& Principe.

It also has the technical and financial backing of the Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa of the African Development Bank (ADB0 to the tune o 302,000 dollars. (NAN)

NCC impounds illegal broadcast devices in Enugu

The Nigeria Copyright Commission (NCC) on Saturday in Enugu impounded illegal broadcast and transmission devices valued at about N3.5 million in Enugu.

It was reported that the seizure was made when the Anti-Transmission Piracy of the commission raided spots for the devices at Obiagu Road, Achara Layout and Ogui area of the city.

NCC’s Director of Enforcement, Mr Augustine Amodu, told newsmen that the raid followed complaints by Multichoice Company of illegal transmission of its signals to homes by some persons.

He said that three "power houses’’ belonging to the illegal operators were destroyed, while 34 decoders, a television set, nine satellite dishes, two generating sets and two inverters were recovered during the clampdown.

“NCC disconnected illegal connection of Multichoice Company signals in over 2,000 houses in Enugu.

“The perpetrators bought decoders from Multichoice and transmitted it to neighbours through house-to-house wiring.

“They collected a fee ranging from N2, 000 to N3, 000 monthly, making Mutichoice that owns the business to run at a loss.

“The commission came down to Enugu to help curb this ugly menace of illegality which is very unfortunate,” Amodu said.

He said that NCC had organized public awareness on the issue but to no avail as perpetrators continued their activities.

The director said the raid would serve as deterrent to others who wanted to engage in the illegal business.

He said that the commission was winning the fight against piracy in the country through enforcement and prosecution.

He said that no arrest was made in the raid in Enugu, because the perpetrators ran away and that the exercise was not done simultaneously in the state.

Amodu said that the enforcement would continue in other parts of the state, adding that the commission would conduct routine checks to ensure that those disconnected did not go back to the business.

A Mutichoice representative who pleaded anonymity said that the company got the information of the activities of the perpetrators through a routine exercise operation. 

(NAN)

A Proud Uncle: Jay-Jay Okocha Delighted with Iwobi Performance as Arsenal beat Everton at Goodison Park

Danny Welbeck opened the scoring on seven minutes, put through by Alexis Sanchez to round Joel Robles and slot home for his fourth of the season.

On 42 minutes, teenager Alex Iwobi marked his maiden Premier League start with a first goal for the club.

The results leaves the Gunners eight points behind leaders Leicester City.

It was a first win in four league matches for third-placed Arsenal, who dominated the game.

In contrast, Everton failed to test their opponents properly and had just two shots on target as their dreadful home form - now four defeats in five in the league - continued.

Arsenal began the week with a 2-1 home defeat by Watford in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup being knocked out of the FA Cup.

Then on Wednesday they lost 3-1 to Barcelona at the Nou Camp as they were knocked out of the Champions League.

With only the league to focus on, this looked like a must-win match for the Gunners if they were to stay in touch with Leicester.

And with fifth-placed West Ham only three points behind before kick-off, with the top four qualifying for next season's Champions League.

In the event, they responded to last week's disappointments with a positive performance and earned a first league win since they beat Leicester 2-1 on 14 February.

It was a dream full league debut by Iwobi, the 19-year-old Nigeria midfielder.

He has come through the ranks at Arsenal's Hale End academy and made his first-team debut in October's 3-0 League Cup defeat to Sheffield Wednesday and signed a new contract last year.

Iwobi was born in Lagos but played for England's youth teams before deciding to represent Nigeria and has won two caps for the Super Eagles.

He boasts footballing pedigree as his uncle is former Bolton and Nigeria legend Jay-Jay Okocha.

Iwobi was brimming with confidence in attack and had the most shots of any of his team-mates.

He linked well with Welbeck and showed composure and strength to hold off the challenge of Ramiro Funes Mori before scoring his goal.

Everton have now won just one of their last nine Premier League games at Goodison Park.

They have the league's worst defensive record at home, conceding 28 goals - already the most they have shipped in a 38-game Premier League season.

The Toffees' record is worse than bottom club Aston Villa, who have let in 25 at Villa Park.

They have kept only two clean sheets at home in the league this season and their Goodison Park record reads: played 16, won four, drawn four, lost eight.

The fans were audibly frustrated at their team's poor form and the home defence was exposed horribly by Hector Bellerin's well-flighted pass for Iwobi's goal.

Roberto Martinez changed formation at half-time, bringing on England defender John Stones for midfielder Muhamed Besic and switching to a back three.

The change worked as Everton looked more compact in the second-half, but they rarely threatened a comeback.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger: "It was a very significant win for us and a mental test. We continued the level of performance against Barcelona. I like this group, I like the mental attitude - it has been questioned and it hurts me. When you work every day with them you see how much effort they put in."

Everton manager Roberto Martinez on BT Sport: "We looked like the team who had an extra game [in midweek]. Arsenal started with intensity and we didn't really turn up in terms of that intensity. I haven't seen us play that badly this season."

The Premier League takes a break for international football and Arsenal do not play again until 2 April when Watford visit the Emirates,

Next for Everton is a trip to Old Trafford to face Manchester United on 3 April.

Russia plane crash killed dozen in the city of Rostov-on-Don

The plane broke apart on landing

The FlyDubai Boeing 737-800, coming from Dubai, missed the runway as it attempted to land at 03:50 local time (00:50 GMT) on Saturday.

It is not clear what caused the crash but poor visibility and high winds are being considered as a factor.

Most of the victims were Russian. Four children were among the dead.

FlyDubai said 44 Russians, eight Ukrainians, two Indians and an Uzbek were killed. All were passengers.

All but one of the crew were Russians, a Russian emergency ministry statement said, without giving further details.

CCTV footage showed an explosion and a huge flash after the plane crashed.

"The aircraft hit the ground and broke into pieces," the Investigative Committee of Russia said on its website.

Reports say the plane abandoned its initial attempt to land and circled for two hours before crashing at the second attempt.

It came down about 250m (800ft) short of the start of the runway in Rostov, some 950km (600 miles) south of Moscow.

About 700 rescue workers were sent to the site of the crash and the fire was extinguished, media reports said.

Both the plane's flight data recorders have been found and an investigation has been opened into the cause of the crash.

Other flights have been diverted away from the airport.

In a statement on its Facebook page, the airliner confirmed the "tragic accident" and said an emergency response has been put in place.

Boeing said on Twitter its team was working to gather more details.

FlyDubai, a low cost carrier launched in 2009 with a hub in Dubai, operates flights to some 90 destinations.

( BBC)

See Amazing Photo of The World’s First Underwater Tennis Court Set To Be Built In Dubai!

Polish architect Krzysztof Kotala, from the ’8 + 8 Concept Studio’, has come up with a seriously ambitious project — an underwater tennis court. The tennis complex will be located offshore in the Persian Gulf, between the Burj al Arab and the Palm Jumeirah islands. The audience will have a choice of entertainments to experience there: watch a tennis match on one of the seven courts, or spy on the incredible marine life through a massive glass dome.

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It should be noted that at the moment, the underwater court is just a concept in need of investors. Finding the money won’t be easy, since the project poses many engineering challenges that seem almost impossible to overcome. Nevertheless, we at A&D would like to wish Krzysztof the best of luck, and we hope he never gives up and keeps on following his wild imagination!


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Tale of Saddam Hussein's Supergun

On permanent display in the Royal Armouries’ collection at Fort Nelson, Hampshire are two huge, steel pipes bolted together and projecting high into the air. They’re enormous, big enough for someone to crawl through.

These giant cylinders are one of the few remaining pieces of a contender for one of the most audacious pieces of engineering ever designed: a “supergun” called Big Babylon, which could have fired satellites into orbit from a 156m-long barrel (512ft) embedded inside a hill.

Its Canadian inventor, Gerald Bull, who was one of the world’s leading artillery experts, had high hopes that it would revolutionise space launches, removing the need for conventional rockets. “Bull was an outstanding scientist and a charismatic figure, and this is the physical reminder of what he did on a monumental scale,” says Nicholas Hall, Keeper of Artillery at the Royal Armouries.

But Big Babylon was never built, and no-one has got close since. So what happened? The answer is a tale of hubris, thwarted ambitions and military secrets. At a time when Bull’s expertise should have been in high demand by all of the world’s superpowers, he chose to make his supergun for Saddam Hussein instead, a decision that would end in murder.

Decades later, tantalising questions remain: could Bull’s supergun idea have worked? And might the idea that died with him ever return?

A gifted academic, Bull began working with the Canadian and US governments researching supergun technology in the 1960s. Initially, engineers used his designs to test supersonic flight without the need for an expensive wind tunnel, by firing projectiles short distances through the barrel of a large gun. But although he would end up spending much of his career in government-funded weapons research designing rockets and guns for warring countries, his personal ambition was to use his designs to launch satellites not missiles.

“Low cost was the concept, at least,” explains Andrew Higgins, a professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University, Canada. “Rather than throwing away the first stage of a rocket, using a large gun for the first stage would enable this hardware to be reused and easily serviced.”

In 1961, Bull began working on the High Altitude Research Project (Harp), a joint venture between the US and Canadian governments. Using modified ex-Navy guns, Bull and his colleagues fired weather probes into sub-orbit and back down again. The costly and controversial Vietnam War meant the project was canned in 1967 before they could get any objects into orbit, but it teased Bull with the possibility of creating a satellite-launching supergun – a spacegun.

The idea appealed to Bull because it would remove the need for multiple rocket stages to reach orbit. The first moments of a conventional rocket launch require a huge amount of energy to get the rocket moving, because this is when the vehicle is filled with the most amount of fuel, and the atmosphere is at its thickest. What’s more, rocket motors are expensive.

The Harp launch guns could reach 2km/s, explains Higgins, and if you used gas to power the projectiles, you could go much faster. “They really replace the first 1.5 stages of a conventional launch vehicle,” he says.

You might think that no satellite could survive the huge g-force of acceleration of a spacegun launch, but this is “often over exaggerated”, according to Higgins. “Military artillery shells today have GPS and laser-guidance optics and electronics that survive these accelerations, so it can be done. Obviously, not everything can be launched this way, but gun launch is well suited for launching fuel and building materials.

“Punching through the lower (denser) part of the atmosphere at high speed is an intense heat transfer problem, but ablative coatings and heat shields on the nose of the projectile should be up to the job,” says Higgins. One of the main downsides would be the sonic boom, an environmental, or even political, concern, he adds.

Bull was convinced that his supergun designs were the way forward, he just needed the funding. The problem was that by the 1970s the rest of the world had lost interest in superguns and were now looking elsewhere. To find money, Bull began to sell weapons and continued to develop his space supergun as a side project. He set up a private company – the Space Research Corporation of Quebec – and soon started selling arms to the South African government.

In 1976, Bull was arrested in South Africa for violating the United Nations arms embargo and he served six months in a US prison, wrote the New York Times after his death. On release he began selling to South Africa again, and this time was fined $55,000 for international arms dealing. Fed up with the involvement of the Canadian and US governments in his work he moved to Brussels, Belgium, and began operating through a European company.

Bull was not tricky to work with, according to Hall, but he did seem to have become darker towards the end of his career – more autocratic. “I don’t think he was the archetypal mad genius figure,” adds Hall. “But he was slowly alienating himself from the Western world.”

In 1981, the Iraqi government contacted Bull to design artillery for them to use in the Iraq-Iran war. At this time, Saddam Hussein was the Iraqi defence secretary; he liked Bull and his designs after they proved vital in their campaign.

“He was particularly interesting to Hussein because he could help him with their artillery problems,” says Hall. “At the time, working with Iraq wasn’t such a strange decision because they weren’t a threat to the West. Hussein wanted to be the leader of the Arab world and show his success with their technology. He did wish for some sort of space programme, so this would have appealed to Bull. He was a great catch for Hussein as an expert.”

Finally, in 1988, the Iraqi government paid Bull $25 million to begin Project Babylon – the first true spacegun project – on the condition that he continued to work on their artillery. Project Babylon began life as three superguns; two full-sized Big Babylon 1000mm calibre guns and a prototype 350mm calibre gun called Baby Babylon. The full-size Big Babylon barrel would have been 156m in length with a one metre bore. In total it would have weighed 1,510 tonnes; far too big to be transportable, and so instead would have been mounted at a 45 degree angle on a hillside.

Big Babylon would have overshadowed all previous supergun designs for size – including guns built for military use like the giant German guns from the two World Wars and later spacegun designs – although we can only estimate other details, like launch velocity.

You can see a larger version of this graphic here (Credit: Nigel Hawtin)

Using nine tonnes of special supergun propellant, Big Babylon would have been theoretically capable of firing a 600kg projectile across 1,000 kilometres, putting Kuwait and Iran well within striking distance from inside Iraq. Alternatively, the gun could be used to launch a 2,000kg rocket-assisted projectile carrying a 200kg satellite.

To do this would have required an enormous charge. “One very considerable technical problem with a gun of this size is how you ignite the charge,” says Hall. “It burns quickly, but with such a long barrel you need a sustained release. This means you need to solve some far more complicated calculations than with smaller types of artillery.” He believes Bull could have worked it out though.

“We know roughly what the projectiles would have looked like. Something similar to an anti-tank round, where the projectile is housed in a light-weight casing which falls away at the muzzle of the gun. Beyond that, we don’t really know.”

Had Bull been able to solve these issues, the capabilities of Big Babylon would have made the supergun an attractively cheap way to launch satellites. The cost was roughly $1,727 per kilogram, adjusting for inflation. By comparison, Nasa estimates that it costs $22,000 per kilogram to launch a modern satellite into orbit using conventional rockets.

Bull wasn’t the only one who saw the potential in superguns – experiments elsewhere around the same time supported the idea that it could work. In the late 1980s, a scientist at the US Lawrence Livermore National Lab called John Hunter with a background in magnetic guns began to work on gas-powered guns with a few million dollars in funding and the project name Super Harp (or Sharp), as an homage to Bull’s earlier endeavours.

A powder gun like the one used in Harp and a gas gun like Sharp both work in the same basic way – expanding gases. The lighter the gases molecular weight, the faster it expands in air. Gunpowder has a molecular weight of 22, slightly less than air at around 28, but ignited gunpowder is incredibly hot, so that’s why it expands so quickly. The hydrogen used in gas guns, however, has a molecular weight of two so expands extraordinarily quickly in air.

“Harp would have used a powder gun to get [the projectile] to about 2 km/s, then used a rocket to get the rest of the way to the 8 km/s required for orbit,” says Higgins. “Gas guns (like Sharp) have proven to get to speeds of 6 km/s.” So the projectile is already travelling much closer to the required speed to enter orbit.

The benefit would be that less space would be needed for propellant to carry it fully into orbit, providing much more room for satellites, fuel or building materials.

Sharp demonstrated that gas gun technology could reach escape velocity – and Bull was aware of Hunter’s work – but there’s no evidence he was inspired by this technology.

Bull wasn’t ignorant to the possibility that Iraq could use his supergun technology to fire missiles, but he justified his actions by pointing out that it would be an impractical weapon, says Hall. Its size meant that it would not be possible to move the gun once it was constructed; it only pointed in one direction, was slow to fire, could be easily located and easily destroyed if anyone wished to. Everyone would know where it was, and everyone would immediately know if it had been fired from the seismic tremors it caused. The recoil force from the gun would have totalled 27,000 tonnes – equivalent to a nuclear explosion – and would have registered as a major seismic event around the world. “It was completely vulnerable to air attack,” says Hall. “You couldn’t move it. But of course when one allows one’s brain to think about what Hussein then did, it’s tempting to consider it as a military threat.”

It’s possible, of course, that the Iraqi government wanted the weapon despite its weaknesses. “It was meant for long-range attack and also to blind spy satellites,” General Hussein Kamel al-Majeed, who supervised Iraq’s weapons development programme, is quoted as saying after he defected to Jordan to work with the United Nations. “Our scientists were seriously working on that. It was designed to explode a shell in space that would have sprayed a sticky material on the satellite and blinded it.”

By May 1989 Baby Babylon, the 45-metre long prototype gun, was completed and mounted on a hillside, and tests began. The smaller gun should have been easily capable of launching a projectile 750km.

Components for the Big Babylon gun were manufactured in Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland and Italy. The enormous steel pipes on display at Fort Nelson weremanufactured in the UK by Sheffield Forgemasters – known for manufacturing high quality steel.

Less than a year later, however, it would all come to an end.

On March 22 1990 Bull was shot three times in the back and twice in the head as he entered his Brussels apartment. No one witnessed his assassination – the gun was silenced – and a killer was never identified. In the months before his killing, Bull’s flat was broken into on several occasions. With hindsight, this might have been a warning of what was to come. The New York Times reported that when police arrived at the scene they found the key still in his door and his unopened briefcase containing nearly $20,000 in cash.

It’s not known who killed him. The Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, was linked with the assassination of Bull, not because of the supergun directly, but because of the work he was doing additionally to improve Iraq’s ballistic missile technology. Others linked the US, UK and South African intelligence services, as well as Iraq themselves.

After his death, Project Babylon went cold. Two weeks later,UK customs seized supergun components leaving the midlands port of Teesport. Iraq invaded Kuwait shortly after and that ended Western involvement with the Iraqi regime.

So could superguns ever make a return? Some have tried. In 2009, Hunter and two other colleagues began a new venture off the back of Sharp. The project was called Quicklaunch, and it hoped to use hydrogen-powered gas guns to fire fuel to space station depots for use in manned spaceflight to the Moon and to Mars.

The launcher was designed to be 1,100m long and to float in the ocean almost entirely underwater with only the 3m wide muzzle projecting above the waves. The advantage of this over all the earlier land-based designs is that the gun could be moved and angled easily, allowing more than one launch a day to different orbits. Hunter even suggests, in this Google Tech Talk from 2009, that the gun could launch a payload every two hours.

However, the project never really got going because of “internal issues”, according to Hunter. “It’s no more. There’s some intellectual property there but the members have split up.”

It also looks unlikely that any supergun projects will restart given that Space X’s reusable rocket launchers have been dominating the headlines. “For now, with the work Elon Musk is doing with Space X there’s no room for a project like Quicklaunch,” says Hunter. “But I’m happy as a clam for Elon, I really am, because it takes the monkey off my back.”

Someone with Musk’s financial clout could explore superguns if he wanted, Hunter adds, but it’s probably not in his interest to undercut his efforts with rockets. “Elon is a smart businessman, he understands that if he pursued a less conventional method he would lose the backing he has,” he says. “He would rock the boat too much. He would lose his base. It would be a mistake to support this even if he knows the physics is right.”

There’s also the fact that Bull clouded the potential of superguns by his choice of politically controversial backers. “There’s a stigma around superguns that mean they are unlikely to be considered even if they’re a better technology for launching satellites,” says Hall.

Hunter is optimistic about the future though. “I think we’ll see superguns again. There’s a chance that I will take it forward if Elon drops the ball, but for now we need too many miracles for it to work out.”

However, a handful of universities and research facilities around the world do still use supergun-like technology on a smaller scale for aerospace engineering. Only not to launch satellites, but to test high-speed impacts of space debris on satellites’ protective layers.

“I operate a gun in my lab here at McGill that is nudging up to 11 km/s (almost escape velocity),” says Higgins. And there are even plans to design guns that reach up to 15km/s. These incredible speeds are needed to test what happens when tiny fragments of space debris strike the outer layers of satellites, something not possible to achieve without these high-powered gas guns. So while no satellites are being launched with Bull’s technology, it is being used to protect the ones that are already up there.

Meanwhile, the remaining parts of Bull’s supergun are mostly sitting in storage, or in museum displays. At the end of the war the UN seized and destroyed the one working Baby Babylon prototype and the remaining components of the two Big Babylon guns, as well as evidence of Iraqi designs for their own supergun.

Some parts survived though: those seized by UK customs. “After they were not needed as evidence, they would normally have been sold or cut up,” says Hall. “Because customs were interested in the story, they arranged for some of the pipes to be given to museums, and the MOD kept some.”

To the outside eye, those two giant cylinders in the Royal Armoury don’t look like much – you could mistake them for an oil pipe – but these chunks of metal are some of the last remaining fragments of Gerald Bull’s legacy: a man whose dreams of aiming high brought him crashing back to Earth.

By William Park

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