Nonabelian anyons are universal for quantum computation, so physicists are trying to build solid state systems with higher-dimensional anyons rather like "quantized smoke rings" that interact via the loop braid group. In such a system, you would get knotted "particles". On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 8:43 AM, Warren D Smith <warren.wds@gmail.com> wrote:

Adam Goucher's post about the old forgotten, and vastly discredited "vortex model of atoms" I guess shows this was a kind of "string theory," i.e. atoms supposedly were different kinds of knots on a closed string?

Thus proving, you just cannot kill bad ideas :)

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