MIT researchers develop a mathematical model to predict a knot’s stability with the help of color-changing fibers. Photo by Joseph Sandt Knots are some of the oldest and most-used technologies that ...

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 come a long way ...

Suppose someone hands you a loop of string with a big tangle in it. There is probably no mathematical way known for you to determine whether it can be untangled without cutting it. Three members of ...

Mathematicians say knots cannot exist in four-dimensional space. (Image: Canva) Knots cannot exist in four-dimensional space, say mathematicians. In 4D, any knot can be untied without cutting the rope ...

At the heart of every resonator — be it a cello, a gravitational wave detector, or the antenna in your cell phone — there is a beautiful bit of mathematics that has been heretofore unacknowledged.

Color-changing fibers are helping scientists to understand, for the first time, the exact ways some knots hold tighter than others. In 2018, researchers developed pressure-sensitive fibers in part to ...

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 ...

Researchers wanted to understand precisely how blackworms execute tangling and ultrafast untangling movements for a myriad of biological functions. They researched the topology of the tangles. Their ...

The picture below may not look that complicated to people unfamiliar with knot theory, but it's been confounding mathematicians for decades. Now, a graduate student-turned-MIT professor holds the ...

Consider the plight of a gardener struggling with a recalcitrant tangle of garden hose. Sometimes, no amount of pulling or twisting unsnarls the coils. At other times, the tangles readily come apart, ...