Kettle

Some nice person bought me a "Book of Useless Information" a while back and one of the entries caught my interest: H2O expands as it freezes and contracts as it melts, displacing the exact same amount of fluid in either state. So if the northern ice cap did melt, it would cause absolutely no rise in the level of the ocean Equipped with just a GCSE in Dual Science that was news to me (the bit about oceans - not the freezing and contracting) - is there anyone more learned in these matters that could corroborate this? Also (question #2) I remember back in the 1990s there seemed to be a group of scientists who said that a significant portion of the effects of global warming could be attributed to the fact that we are still at the tail end of the most recent Ice Age so obviously temperatures across the globe will increase until we fully emerge. They seem to have been a bit quiet of late (and everyone is once again talking about pollution) - has this theory been thrown out? Cheers

Ah - point duly noted (I hadn't noticed the news forum). And yes - very cool

ROFL Yurgh - that guy is so scary. But you can hardly see him "banging out some fresh crisp biscuits on the 1's and 2's" (or whatever it is) with his homies. I certainly hope that kids are sufficiently streetwise not to be taken in with this

This is a strange one.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3052467.stm (sorry if I'm not allowed to post links to outside sites btw).

Aha Has anyone come up with a theory for moving backwards in time?

I'm in no way knowledgable about these things (so please excuse me if this seems a bit on the simple side) but.... We know from giving watches to astronauts that the speed you are travelling affects time - the faster you are travelling in distances, the quicker you are also travelling through time. So if, theoretically, we managed to travel very, very, very fast between the Earth and a distant point in the solar system or galaxy (maybe at the speed of light), you would in a way travel forward through time - maybe only a couple of days would have passed for you but several weeks or months will have passed back on Earth. I know this isn't *technically* time travel and you still wouldn't be able to travel backwards in time but would travelling at near light speeds be easier than breaking the space-time continuum?