In a new Nature Physics study, researchers created particle-like so-called “vortex knots” inside chiral nematic liquid crystals, a twisted fluid similar to those used in LCD screens. For the first time, these knots are stable and could be reversibly switched between different knotted forms, using electric pulses to fuse and split them.

Tokyo, Japan – Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have re-engineered the popular Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM) for simulating the flow of fluids and heat, making it lighter and more stable than the state-of-the-art. By formulating the algorithm with a few extra inputs, they successfully got around the need to store certain data, some of which span the millions of points over which a simulation is run. Their findings might overcome a key bottleneck in LBM: memory usage.