As incredible as travelling back to prehistory would be; saving the Library of Alexandria, or actually communicating with a Neanderthal, a few "harmless" bacteria or viruses hitching a lift could far too easily decimate world.

I mean, North America was virtually wiped out before Europeans got up there by introduced plagues spreading from the south.

I fear too what nasties would be about that had gone extinct since, or how the left-behind bacteria might evolve in the few millennia as you travel back to your former age.

Apt. This means 'Red Island' in Irish, so Red Island in a Red sand sea, on a Red planet... I believe there is a slight misspelling though - this should be 'Oilean Ruadh' (no 'i' in Ruadh, though I haven't figured out how to put fadas over a's on Slashdot.)

European. The African pigeon beat broadband last year. Early pigeon protocol (PP) trials were also spearheaded in the States last year.

Going by the last time Slashdot reported this, it's 4,000 km. Or 2,500 miles, as Slashdot-units were imperial way back in 2004...

This is a story from 2004, though it keeps popping up in the "most read" list on BBC news. Also, it was reported on Slashdot 6 years ago.

Well, along with pretty much everyone else from Ireland, I have studied the modern language for 14 years. That being said, it is not used for daily conversation outside of very limited areas (the Gaelteacht). Back at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions, the language here would have been Old Irish - which was quite a bit more arcane and complex (well - at least according to the little I have seen of it), though certainly recognisable.

In Britain, Brythonic would have been spoken - which would be much closer to modern day Welsh (Britain was likely settled through France, and Ireland through Spain at perhaps 350 BC- the Celtic language had diverged earlier yet).

Trace it back, and you get earlier peoples in the Isles, conquered or assimilated. These had their own cultures, languages and monuments (Newgrange is over 5 thousand years old, and is older than the Pyramids). These too are lost - remembered only as Formorians, Firbolg, or Milesians.

Now the Welsh were these Britons existing in a land yet unconquered by the Saxons - indeed their very country is named by the Saxons for it (Waelas - foreigner, often a Celtic (sometimes Roman) epithet. Wallachia and Vlad have the same root). As was Cornwall (Kern Waelas - Foreigners of the Horn).

And yes, England experienced many many waves of conquest, as evidenced by our mongrel tongue. Perhaps the most remarkable part is that their relative integrity in the recent Millenium or so. The same, unfortunately, could not be said of Ireland - although in earlier years we got off lightly. Indeed, post Roman times, we were raiders too: Ever wondered why Scottish is just a version of Irish?.

The other half, as I might have mentioned elsewhere, is in the Hunterian Museum

I second the Imperial War Museum. For bonus geek points, the building in which it is housed used to be Bedlam.

Two other, slightly less well known places:

Hunterian Museum at the royal college of surgeons - incredible array of medical curiosities.

The Wallace Collection - Incredible array of art and armour housed in a splendidly ostentatious yet intimate townhouse. One Sunday a month, the rooms are lit candlelight.

For a Cthulhuesque experience, you can trace the two halves of Babbage's Brain

(*spoiler* one is in the science museum, the other the Hunterian)

Having read TFA, I am interested why the authors hypothesise that the precipitation is as solid rocks. Intuitively, it would make more sense that it would be in a liquid phase (while I have no idea of what pressures would exist on the planet, and am no geologist, liquid rocks seem to exist across temperature ranges in excess of 100's of degrees here on earth.) Admittedly, the article does seems to imply that there is no rotation of the planet, and thus gaseous rock migrating to the super-cold side might (possibly) precipitate rapidly. In fact, would this imply that there is a large scale migration of rock from the sunward side of the planet to that opposed to the sun (and would this in turn alter the fundamental planet shape? I envisage dinnerplate planets...)