A trio of unrelated snippets that reached me this week.

I’ve had a busy week of previews. As well as the new James Watt exhibition at the Science Museum and Wellcome Collection’s new show about Dirt, I also attended a long-lead preview about the British Library’s forthcoming Science Fiction exhibition. It’s going to be a corker, trust me. They’re digging right back to the earliest roots of the genre, with copies of a 17th century story that first speculated on weightless spaceflight. Other exhibits will tackle possible futures, cyberspace, end-of-the-world scenarios and more. The show will be supported by Discovery Channel, whose TV tie-ins include a new show called Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. Which made me snigger, if not the stoic journos sitting next to me. The exhibition doesn’t open till May, which is two months away for most of us, or this afternoon if you have a time machine.

Frank Norman, late of this parish, sends me a link to an archaeological dig at the future UKCMRI site. The plot of land behind the British Library will shortly be developed into a world-class biomedical research facility. In the meantime, however, it’ll be scrutinised by trowel-wielding archaeologists. They’re not sure what they’ll find. The site has a long industrial heritage, but is also close to the ancient (as in early Saxon) site of old St Pancras church, and close to the banks of the River Fleet. The public will get a chance to view the dig and learn more about the plans for the site at various dates in late April.

Finally, the Standard picks up on a story about UCL researcher Kevin Pickering, whose team are working on a project to help predict earthquakes in the regions around Japan. In a huge project involving many international scientists, a hole will be dug four and a half miles below the sea bed, allowing monitoring equipment to get data on plate movements.