Many times many discoveries have been made suddenly and accidentally. In one such exercise, scientists have accidentally set a record for making the world’s smallest and strongest knot. This bundle has broken the previous Guinness World Record. While conducting a chemical experiment, scientists unknowingly combined only 54 atoms into a lump and what is more interesting is that they did not even understand how this happened. Whereas this knot can be useful in many fields.
This knot is coming from a three-leafed clove. The knot formed in this three times has no “loose ends” and it stands true to the mathematical knot theory. Researchers from Canada’s University of Western Ontario and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have broken the record of the year 2020 by making this new record, which was made by a Chinese chemist with the help of one such lump of 69 atoms.
The strength of this type of knot increases as the ratio of atoms and back crossings decreases. The Backbone Crossing Ratio (BCR) of the 2020 knot was 23, while the ratio of the new knot formed this time was found to be 18. This process helps scientists to understand DNA, RNA and proteins better.
Only 54 atoms have been used in the new knot. (Symbolic photo: Wikimedia Commons)
These accidental achievements were made during experiments on organic chemical reactions that were carried out with acetylides of metals. In these experiments, scientists were trying to make gold chains or catenanes, but instead a trefoil knot was formed connecting the gold acetylide and diphosphine ligand.
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Researchers even say that it was a very complex system and they could not understand at all how it happened. This discovery will not only be used in the medical field, it can also be used in developing advanced materials like plastics and polymers. The task of joining molecules into knots is challenging. This is called synthesis. It can have great utility in protein structure and functions of molecular substances.
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FIRST PUBLISHED: January 27, 2024, 08:31 IST