The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1876, Peter Guthrie Tait set out to measure what he called the “beknottedness” of knots. The Scottish mathematician, whose research ...

Imagine living sometime around the early 1600s. You're standing on the deck of a wooden ship. The wind's biting, the sky's endless. And your captain's yelling, "Drop the log!" Back then, before sonar ...

After a year of testing, I discovered the diagram in my original GT knot article was wrong. Here’s the corrected version and a brief explanation why this knot still earns my full confidence. Now that ...

The improved clinch knot has long been the standard for tying lures to fishing lines. In fact, it's so universal among anglers that it's sometimes called the fisherman's knot. It's easy to learn, ...

Find a string. Really. Do it. Now twist, tie and tangle it as much as you like. Finally, attach the two loose ends of your string together to make a closed loop. (This is a crucial step.) What you ...

Knots proponents claim to be supporters of Bitcoin's decentralization and its use as censorship resistant money, but their actions do not align with that claim. They claim to fight for mining ...

In 1876, Peter Guthrie Tait set out to measure what he called the “beknottedness” of knots. The Scottish mathematician, whose research laid the foundation for modern knot theory, was trying to find a ...

Scanning the crowd at a fancy soiree may reveal a wide array of neckties, each fastened with a highly complex mathematical object masquerading as fashion. An entire field of mathematics is devoted to ...

Why is untangling two small knots more difficult than unravelling one big one? Surprisingly, mathematicians have found that larger and seemingly more complex knots created by joining two simpler ones ...

A massive surge in Bitcoin Knots nodes hints at a brewing civil war in Bitcoin. If tensions escalate, the price could be the first casualty. Bitcoin Knots, first released by developer Luke Dashjr in ...