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Major Advances In Knot Theory
An anonymous reader sends us to Science News, which is running a survey of recent strides in finding an answer to the age-old question: How many ways are there to tie your shoelaces? "Mathematicians have been puzzling over that question for a century or two, and the main thing they've discovered is that the question is really, really hard. In the last decade, though, they've developed some powerful new tools inspired by physics that have pried a few answers from the universe's clutches. Even more exciting is that the new tools seem to be the tip of a much larger theory that mathematicians are just beginning to uncover. That larger mathematical theory, if it exists, may help crack some of the hardest mathematical questions there are, questions about the mathematical structure of the three- and four-dimensional space where we live. ... Revealing the full ... superstructure may be the work of a generation."
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Revealing the full... superstructure may be the work of a generation.
..assuming computers cease making any new advances.
Mathematicians do rely on their ability to spot patterns and sense implications that no computer can likely sift for today. But this will not always be the case.
-- thinkyhead software and media
The world has been in far worse situations than it's in now. The transient problems of immediate political and social realities shouldn't stop a few people from investigating nature's deep questions via science and mathematics.
Once upon a time, I was similarly bored by this area of abstract research. But about a year ago, I attended a seminar where a guest lecturer was a mathematician who applied knot theory to the physical modeling of life processes involving the winding and unwinding of DNA in Chromosomes and the folding and unfolding of peptide strings in protein formation. I didn't understand half of the lecture. But one very important point I got out of it is that no matter how abstract and esoteric a subject might be, there is immense value to be obtained if it can be utilized to model physical processes we seek to understand.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Oh really? Would you also say studying topology in general is unimportant? Why or why not? Since you're able to discern which branches of mathematics aren't "important", you're clearly a mathematical authority, so please feel free to enlighten us.
but it will never be able to explain why anyone would want to "tie the knot."
I think the important thing is that when you're investigating new areas of mathematics and it's _hard_, that's because the tools you're using are not suited for investigating this issue. So you invent a new tool, and that new tool can be applied in many, many places.
Hard problems are only hard because we're using the wrong tools.
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
I can't believe I got moderated as a troll
Why? You made a whiny, irrelevent complaint that dismisses the role of pure research in the larger advancement of our knowledge of how the universe works... the very sort of thing that always plays a role in advancing our ability to make more efficient use of energy, more realistic predictions about the behavior of complex systems, and more innovative technological use of things we think we have already fully, or most effectly exploited. This whole "the human race is incapable of doing two things at once" BS never ceases to amaze me. How do you even get out of bed in the morning? Make coffee... take a crap... which to do first? Gaah! I'm paralyzed! Which is the most important fish to fry?
In other words, you're scare mongering and - if we can assume you have a passable IQ which would suggest you might know better - clearly trolling. And, voila, you were thusly modded.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Suppose you tell us all how solving this knotty problem will help anyone or anything.
Let's pretend we're in the early 1700s. Leonhard Euler is writing the first ever paper on a field of study called Graph Theory. Simply put, he's figuring out answers to questions about how to arrange circles and lines. Meanwhile, there's fucking WARS going on (Polish succession is going on concurrent to writing this paper; Seven Years' war happens a couple decades later). There are goddamn wars on Euler's front door, and he's writing papers about lines and circles?! What a prick.
Oh, by the way, without Euler's work we wouldn't have computers, organized roads, efficient data models, efficient sorting algorithms, or countless other instruments that are critical to today's society.
Don't trivialize work that you don't understand.
It was whiny, it was irrelevant (how did it relate to knot theory?), it did dismiss pure research -- as if pure research scientists should drop everything and join the war effort, it was scare mongering (as if the only thing we should be thinking about is politics and war)...
Lastly, it is the priorities you're whining about that are irrelevant.
Let politicians work on politics, soldiers work on war, and mathematicians work on math.
If you weren't whining about priorities and politics, then what on earth were you talking about?
And I have spent 5 years of my life on the topology of proteins. It is not quite true to refer to "knots" when talking about proteins, as Professor Taylor has shown (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6798/full/406916a0.html) that only a few proteins are actually 'knotted'.
However, mathematical theory of tangled strings is as important as simulations. Estimating the total number of folds, for example. More than just a fancy excursion - but maybe not to your taste?
Yes, this is important.
What do you think where new ideas on saving the world or building a better one will come from? TV studios? Politicians? Hollywood?
Research like this is the foundation of all progress. Note: Not this one specifically, I said "like" this. A lot of the things that you probably wouldn't live very well without started out as ideas with no visible use.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org