History and hard science.

Monday, March 3, 2008 | 4:41 PM

In the New York Post today, Sarah Stewart watches the trailer for "10,000 B.C." with the Museum of Natural History's Ross MacPhee. Crushingly, it seems there are some historical inaccuracies in this film about a fetchingly dreadlocked caveman fighting saber-toothed tigers and pyramids in order to rescue Camilla Belle and her prehistoric color contacts.

David Hambling at Wired is also directing the unforgiving gaze of Mother Science to the blockbusters — part 1 of his "How to Stop a 500-Foot Monster" piece, inspired by "Cloverfield," was popular enough to spawn a follow-up part 2 garnered from reader feedback:

There were a few suggestions for the Active Denial System or "pain ray." This shows the right kind of instincts: against sci-fi monsters, a sci-fi ray gun feels about right. Unfortunately, the depth-of-penetration problem is even more severe here, as it is carefully designed so that the beam only goes through about 1/64" of skin. In fact this is one of the ADS' selling points, that it will only have surface effects. I have previously described some of the more unusual tests of the Active Denial System, including experiments with military dog teams , but I don't think they ever tried it on anything larger. It's highly unlikely you could get any sort of a reaction from a very thick-skinned monster without redesigning the system from the ground up using a beam with a longer-wavelength.

Juliet Lapidos at Slate looks into whether or not a human could become magnetized enough to erase tapes, à la Jack Black's character in "Be Kind Rewind."

And this post wouldn't be complete without a nod to the conspiracy-tech stylings of Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard, whose speculations on September 11th in an interview from last year have been resurrected for all to contemplate. From Variety: "It was a money-sucker because they were finished, it seems to me, by 1973, and to re-cable all that, to bring up-to-date all the technology and everything, it was a lot more expensive, that work, than destroying them." The actress goes on to suggest the moon landings might not have taken place, which one would think would rule out the ability of anyone to treat these remarks (or, for that matter, Cotillard's general thought processes) with any seriousness. But no — the subsequent uproar has driven Cotillard into retreat, dispatching her lawyer to deliver with the following comment: "Marion never intended to contest nor question the attacks of September 11, 2001, and regrets the way old remarks have been taken out of context." (From the Telegraph.)

[Photo: Way historically accurate: "One Million Years B.C.," 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, 1966]

+ 10,000 B.S. (New York Post)
+ How To: Stop a 500-Foot Monster (Think Missiles, Not Bombs) (Wired)
+ How To: Stop A 500 foot Monster, Continued (Wired)
+ Can a Man Become a Magnet? (Slate)
+ Cotillard shares her Sept. 11 views (Variety)
+ Marion Cotillard U-turns on 9/11 conspiracy (Telegraph)