Ever wondered what four dimensions really mean? Discover why knots can’t exist in 4D space — and how mathematicians use cubes and clever analogies to understand higher dimensions.

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 ...

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 ...

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 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 ...

Editor's Note: This article was provided by Inside Science. The original is here. (Inside Science) – Knots are everywhere, from laces of shoes to stitches that seal cuts. Sailors and others have known ...

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 ...

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, ...