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New knot theory discovery overturns long-held mathematical assumption

(www.scientificamerican.com)
141 points baruchel | 1 comments | 02 Sep 25 11:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.216s | source
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argomo ◴[04 Sep 25 04:42 UTC] No.45123645[source]▶
Maybe the article is dumbing it down too much, but the conclusion seems unsurprising. Why shouldn't a single unknotting do double-duty in some cases?

It feels akin to the classic trick of joining a tetrahedron to a square pyramid: 4 faces + 5 faces == 5 faces total!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rXIzUtLG2jE

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lifeinthevoid ◴[04 Sep 25 06:01 UTC] No.45124043[source]▶
If a lot of very smart people didn’t find a single example in all the years knot theory has existed, it obviously is not that obvious.
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jxbdbdbd ◴[04 Sep 25 10:13 UTC] No.45125565[source]▶
That is not necessarily true. Knot theory is quite niche, maybe nobody before tried bruteforcing counter examples
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1. trueismywork ◴[04 Sep 25 14:32 UTC] No.45127718[source]▶
We have huge data about knots in protein folding. Given that the proof is a counterexqmple, if it was easy, it should have been observed already in data I feel.