Physicists Tie Water Into Knots

Reporting in the journal Nature Physics, William Irvine and Dustin Kleckner, physicists at the University of Chicago, have created a knotted fluid vortex in the lab — a scientific first, they say. The knots resemble smoke rings — except these are made of water, and they're shaped like pretzels, not donuts. Understanding knottiness has extra-large applications, like understanding dynamics of the sun.