While ice reflects around 80 percent of the sun's heat, having a cooling effect, blue sea water can absorb up to 95 percent of solar radiation, warming up the sea and accelerating the melting process further.

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Since the total mass of the ocean and ice remains unchanged during the melting process, this has often led to the erroneous assumption that sea level will be unaffected by the melting of floating ice, say geologists David Holland and Adrian Jenkins.

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Hoya has huge world demand for its patented process for melting and annealing optical glass, which shrinks production times from 26 days to three days.

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In a less elegant but no less impressive effort, NEXT Architects and designer Aura Luz Melis built a lamp that's filled with vegetable fat, which constantly changes its brightness through the process of melting and re-solidifying the fat.

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