How and Why Knots Spontaneously Form

palegray.net writes "Scientists believe they have found the underlying reasons why knots are so common in the universe. This research helps us understand how knotty arrangements in various molecules lead to biological patterns, as in certain proteins. The article also provides a look at the field of topology, and how it relates to knots."

Comments

Hands-on knot theory

[clawsoon]

As a sysadmin who has spent days untangling hundreds of tangled cables from the backs of too-crowded racks - hundreds of A/V lines criss-crossed by dozens of network lines criss-crossed by power cords - I've had some time to think about practical knot theory. I've established two primary hypotheses:

1. Placing cables is difficult because you are not just defining the position of that cable, you are also defining the position of every other cable in relation to that cable. As the number of cables rises, the complexity increases combinatorially. (Or exponentially. Or something. I faked my way through those math classes.)

2. There are many more ways for cables to be tangled than to be untangled, so statistically, tangling is overwhelmingly likely. It's like entropy that way: There are many more ways for particles to move in different directions than there are ways for particles to move in the same direction, so it takes special effort or special circumstances to get them all to line up.