How Complex Is a Knot? New Proof Reveals Ranking System That Works.
“Ribbon concordance” will let mathematicians compare knots by linking them across four-dimensional space. The post How Complex Is a Knot? New Proof Reveals Ranking System That Works. first appeared on Quanta Magazine
Back in 1981, Cameron Gordon introduced a new way to relate two knots — mathematical constructs modeled after the knots that appear in a single thread or string. In his paper, he conjectured that this new relationship could be used to arrange groups of knots according to how complicated they are. This winter, Ian Agol, a mathematician at the University of California, Berkeley, posted a six-page...
Originally published in Quanta Abstractions.
