Copper and lutetium metal ions chaperone this molecular strand into a three-twist knot. Credit: Credit: Stuart Jantzen, Biocinematics It’s annoyingly easy to tangle your headphones into a mess of ...

How can mathematical theory predict the strongest knots in real life? The answer to that question has remained elusive despite humans relying on knots for thousands of years while fishing, hunting, ...

An idea discarded more than a century ago, conceived by Lord Kelvin when he imagined atoms as knots in the ether, has resurfaced at the heart of a new theory that seeks to explain why the universe is ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — You may not have heard of knot theory. But take it from Bill Menasco, a knot theorist of 35 years: This field of mathematics, rich in aesthetic beauty and intellectual challenges, has ...

SMALL PRINT:MOST OF us curse knots – in our shoe laces, in long tresses, in our ties and in streams of traffic. But some people celebrate them, studying them with delight and disecting them with a ...

Mathematicians have studied knots for centuries, but a new material is showing why some knots are better than others. One sunny day last summer, Mathias Kolle, a professor at the Massachusetts ...