Physicists have managed to tie a quantum knot for the first time

[WillParkinson]

An international team of scientists has managed to create a quantum knot for the first time - a fundamental breakthrough in quantum physics that could one day help power the supercomputers of the future. These knots aren't quite the same as the ones you might tie to moor a boat to a jetty - they've been made in a superfluid form of quantum matter called Bose-Einstein Condensate, or BEC, and are more like smoke rings than traditional knots.

"For decades, physicists have been theoretically predicting that it should be possible to have knots in quantum fields, but nobody else has been able to make one," said lead researcher, Mikko Möttönen. "Now that we have seen these exotic beasts, we are really excited to study their peculiar properties. Importantly, our discovery connects to a diverse set of research fields including cosmology, fusion power, and quantum computers."

http://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-say-they-ve-managed-to-tie-a-quantum-knot-for-the-first-time?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

[lob1]

1. How can something so small still be over my head?

[byronius]

2. Superfluidic BEC knots are exotic beasts.

That is a cool sentence.

Now, feed some of them beasts into the EPS conduit through the plasma phase array so we can create a sustainable transwarp envelope for this here used Buick. Otherwise we're not going to get to the alien megastructure during my lifetime.

And I got to make to the alien megastructure, man. I just gotta.

Yeah, be careful what you ask for, right?

[cantbeserious]

3. Keep Dreaming

eom

[central scrutinizer]

4. Deserves a merit badge

But there no longer is a knot tying merit badge. Those skills have been subsumed into the Pioneering merit badge.

http://www.scouting.org/filestore/Merit_Badge_ReqandRes/Pioneering.pdf