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An international team of chemists has set a new world record for tying the world’s smallest knot, which they say consists of only 54 atoms. Remarkably, researchers involved with the achievement say it happened by accident, and are unable to account for how it occurred. Chemists Zhiwen Li, Jingjing Zhang, Gao Li with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, and research colleague Richard J. Puddephatt with the University of Western Ontario, Canada, were attempting an entirely different process in the lab when the record breaking discovery was made. Their achievement is described in a study that...

In all his years in auto racing, NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace said Tuesday night, he has never seen anything like what he described as a “straight-up noose” that was being used as a door pull in the garage he was assigned last week at Talladega Speedway in Alabama. “I’ve been racing all of my life,” Wallace told CNN's Don Lemon. “We've raced out of hundreds of garages that never had garage pulls like that. So people that want to call it a garage pull and put out all the videos and photos of knots being as their evidence, go ahead,...

If you're into rappeling or knot tying for fun or practical survival, have a look at this Bachmann knot. You're going to need it if you're going to encounter climbing up a wet rope. For those not familiar with it, the Bachmann knot is a uni-directional, meaning it can only be loaded from one direction and that's down. Again, its something that most survivalist should know, but how many have actually practice climbing with it? See the video here.

Inca may have used knot computer code to bind empire By Steve Connor, Science Editor 23 June 2003 They ran the biggest empire of their age, with a vast network of roads, granaries, warehouses and a complex system of government. Yet the Inca, founded in about AD1200 by Manco Capac, were unique for such a significant civilisation: they had no written language. This has been the conventional view of the Inca, whose dominions at their height covered almost all of the Andean region, from Colombia to Chile, until they were defeated in the Spanish conquest of 1532. But a leading...