At some point today (Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015), NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will take the deepest dive ever through the ejecta plumes of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. And this is particularly exciting for me, since while I find space exploration fascinating generally, I keep special tabs on my old friend Cassini.

We go WAY back.

Scientists hope this close flyby–approaching to within 30 miles of Enceladus’ surface at a blistering 19,000 mph (yeah–you read that right) will shed light on what’s happening beneath the moon’s icy surface. The belief is that Enceladus has a global ocean beneath its icy crust, and learning more about the contents of the plumes venting from that ocean will tell us a great deal about the possibilities of life hidden beneath the ice.

While Cassini wasn’t designed to look for life–its a planetary survey craft, after all–it does have a suite of instruments that can be re-purposed. Passing through the plumes (which eject into space through great fissures in the ice that NASA scientists refer to as ‘tiger stripes’) it will be able to sense what that frozen water contains. Research already indicates that Enceladus has salts, organic molecules like methane, CO2, and ammonia. If it can find molecular hydrogen–a tell-tale sign of hyrdrothermal activity beneath the ocean–then Enceladus will have all the requirements for the development of life as we know and understand it.

Good luck, Cassini! I’ll be watching…

– S.

In the 1960s two Norwegian archaeologists discovered a Viking base camp at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland. They dated the site to between 989 and 1020 AD, confirming the oldest known European contact with the New World (suck it, Columbus).

Now, archaeologists have confirmed a second Viking site in the Tanfield Valley on the southeast coast of Baffin Island. They’ve found pelt fragments from Old World rats; a whalebone shovel similar to those used by Viking settlers in Greenland to cut sod; large stones that appear to have been cut and shaped by someone familiar with European stone masonry; Viking yarn; and whetstones showing traces of copper alloys such as bronze—materials known to have been made by Viking smiths but unknown among the Arctic’s native inhabitants.

Full details here.

I’ve always loved anything Viking-related, so in my mind the only thing cooler than this would be if the archaeologists had discovered these guys…

– S.

I’ve mentioned before how I sometime sit in the dark, drinking whiskey, wondering whether this whole “fiction thing” has any redeeming social value.

Well, looks like I have even MORE reason to be hopeful that fiction–the lie that tells the truth–can actually make positive change in people’s lives.

Researchers at Ohio State University examined what happened to people who, while reading a fictional story, found themselves feeling the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of one of the characters as if they were their own–a phenomenon the researchers call “experience-taking.”

They found that, in the right situations, experience-taking may lead to real changes, if only temporary, in the lives of readers.

One of the researchers said experience-taking is different from perspective-taking, where people try to understand what another person is going though in a particular situation, but without losing sight of their own identity.

“Experience-taking is much more immersive–you’ve replaced yourself with the other,” she said.

The key is that experience-taking is spontaneous – you don’t have to direct people to do it, but it happens naturally under the right circumstance.

– S.

Think of it as the Director’s Cut.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest narratives in the world, got a surprise update last month when the Sulaymaniyah Museum in the Kurdistan region of Iraq announced that it had discovered 20 new lines of the Babylonian-Era poem of gods, mortals, and monsters. Incredibly, this came about because of the looting that followed the US invasion of Iraq and Baghdad in 2003.

The tablet dates to the Neo-Babylonian period (the best Babylonian period, if you ask me) circa 2000-1500 BC, and fills in a missing part of tablet V of the epic.

These extra lines not only add to the poem’s length, but clear up some of the mysteries in other chapters. The new lines show Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu meeting a monkey, and feeling guilty over killing Humbaba, the guardian of the cedar forest, who is now seen as less a monster and more a king.

Well, I for one, still don’t trust Humbaba. #Team Enkidu, all the way!

– S.