1977 - Special effects one step closer
Image courtesy of Buell Jannuzi, Arjun Dey, Michael Brown, Glenn Tiede, the NDWFS team and NOAO.
In 1977, Professor Joe Monaghan and Dr Bob Gingold develop the smoothed particle hydrodynamics algorithm for simulating complex fluids and solids. This is a powerful method for solving complex fluid dynamical problems.
Today: Its applications now include special effects in movies, such as the scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King when Gollum falls into the lava, the simulation of galaxy and star formation and simulation of volcanic outbursts and tsunamis.