23/11/2017 Newsround

Hi, I'm Ayshah and

this is Newsround.

Coming up in the next few minutes.

Find out what this huge

drill is for and...

We answer one of your

big questions.

First up bad weather has hit parts

of the UK causing big problems.

More than 70 people and 20

horses had to be rescued from floods

in Lancashire in North West England.

Emergency crews received

more than 500 calls.

Lots of houses have been flooded,

schools have been shut and buildings

left without electricity.

Roads were closed and train services

have been stopped because of floods

in north Wales and snow

is forecast across Scotland.

Next to The Ashes, a huge cricket

tournament between England

and Australia which started today.

There is a long standing rivarly

between the two countries

so this match means a lot

to the players.

England were the first to bat

and James Vince made a strong start

to his first Ashes with 83 runs

before Australia fought back.

England finished 196 for four

on the first day of the five

day test match so it's

all still to play for.

Now if you've ever watched Star Wars

you might be familiar

with Warp Speed technology,

which allows people to travel

through space at super-fast speeds.

But, how far away,

are we from making this

technology in real life?

In this week's Big Question we're

answering Oliver's question,

and who better to answer it,

than a Nasa jet propulsion expert?!

Right now it's impossible for us

to move at warp speed through space.

We've thought about ways

of trying to do that,

but there's nothing that's practical

at this point.

Like, for example, right now,

our fastest spaceships can travel

at about 25,000 mph.

With the speed of light you can

travel at 186,000 miles a second.

So if we could travel at that speed

that would take us a second

and a quarter to get to the moon.

Right now, with our fastest ships,

we can take about three

days to get to the moon.

So, wow, really, really slow

in comparison to the speed of light.

Now, we've also computed how much

energy it takes for a spaceship

to go at about a tenth

of the speed of light.

And that's about between five

and 100 times the total

world energy output.

So, wow, all of that energy,

so much, and we just don't

have that on the earth.

So we're going to have to find some

new, fantastic way of creating that

energy before we even think

about going near the speed of light,

let alone going at warp speed.

And we'll be answering one of your

big questions every Thursday.

So if you've got something you'd

like to ask go online now.

Next, what do you do when you need

to dig a really deep hole?

You bring out the

Vibrocorer of course.

It can drill through water

6000 metres deep and can

cut six metres down.

This is the Vibrocorer,

and it means business.

Which is just as well, because these

scientists are drilling

deep chunks of the sea bed around

the British Isles.

Their mission is to solve

the mystery of what happened

to the ice sheet covering Britain

thousands of years ago.

We now have the tools

at our disposal to actually

put together a really,

really meaningful and detailed

reconstruction of ice sheet extent

around Britain and Ireland.

They want to find out when exactly

and how the last ice age ended.

And this could help them predict

what could happen to the ice sheets

in the South Pole today.

So the team are using the Vibrocorer

to find clues from the sea bed.

The giant drill is lowered down

to the bottom of the sea

where it vibrates to collect a long

tube or core of rock and mud.

It's then cut up and brought back

to land to be studied by scientists.

As soon as it is landed,

the scientific party

are desperate to get the sample,

and they disappear

into their magic laboratories.

They are now testing

the samples to find out exactly

when the ice melted and why.

They are hoping that understanding

what happened in the past could help

predcit the future for ice

sheets on earth today.

That's all from the afternoon team

but I'll be back with more top

stories tomorrow morning

from 07:40.