Will there be more summers like the one we had this year?
Yes - and hotter and drier ones too, as global warming gathers pace. The 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990 and temperatures are expected to go on increasing. And scientists say that, as the thermometer rises, British summers will get drier while our winters get wetter. Individual summers will continue to vary but the trend will be increasingly clear.
Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Why does a meteor burn up in the sky and not just fall to the ground?
Space debris varies from the minuscule to the massive and any of it could in theory collide with Earth but only the big stuff is likely to survive the impact with our atmosphere and reach the ground. Meteoric material enters the atmosphere typically at speeds of about 15km per second - some 33,750mph - causing immense friction and heating that can turn the debris into a fireball that burns up before reaching the ground. A big enough meteoroid that survives the passage through the atmosphere becomes a meteorite when its recovered fragment is found.
Steve Connor, Science Editor
With Derren Brown playing Russian roulette live tonight and David Blaine starving himself in his glass box, how close is TV to showing real death as it happens?
Derren Brown and David Blaine are magicians. They are doing tricks. They will not die unless they cock the tricks up (which has been known: just ask Roy of Siegfried and Roy.) It is true that modern TV magic is becoming more extreme, but properly done, it isn't dangerous. You are far more likely to see a live death on one of the rolling news channels. Indeed, we did on 11 September. When two British soldiers were kidnapped, stripped and shot after straying into an IRA funeral in 1988 the recorded pictures were shocking enough. But if coverage had been live, would the producer have cut away?
Charlie Courtauld, Television Critic
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