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HOW many pieces of scientific research have been embraced by Hollywood film-makers? Probably fewer than should have been, but perhaps more than we might have expected. Older readers may remember The Poseidon Adventure, a 1972 disaster movie in which an ocean liner is capsized by a monster wave. In our , we warned that such waves, though poorly understood, were certainly more common than had been thought. “Killer waves”, we reported, were more likely at the continental edge where the sea-floor topography suddenly rises more steeply. We surmised that the loss of the SS Waratah off South Africa in 1909 could be explained by such a wave.

More movie science, sort of, in our . James Bond’s Q would no doubt have been delighted to read that the world’s smallest video camera had been released by Toshiba. It was, we announced excitedly, “the size of your thumb” and you would be able to view the images on a “big-screen display”. Most of us now have cameras a fraction of the size in our phones, and carry the viewing screen around within the same piece of hardware.

It is practically compulsory for just about every shoot-’em-up movie nowadays, but that red dot the bad guy sees on his jacket just before the cops dispatch him with a hail of bullets was worthy of its own news story in 1995. “Beware the red spot, warn New York’s finest” was the headline in our 14 January edition. For the first time, police patrolling the subway would have laser technology to pick out a felon in the gloom, using sights that made aiming in the dark a safer prospect. Unless, of course, you were a criminal and the red dot suddenly appeared in the middle of your chest.