In 1867, Lord Kelvin imagined atoms as knots in the aether.
I had never heard of this before, and I find the idea absolutely delightful. As I understand it, the "knots" are stable vortices in the aether. It was popular from 1870 - 1890, and it blows my mind that only a few years later the electron was discovered (1897), and less than 50 years later (1938), the scanning electron microscope was invented! 1955 was when the atom was first imaged.
It's interesting that the mathematical theory of knots was initially developed in response to Kelvin's proposal (i.e. Tait's work), because people were motivated trying to work out its implications for atomic theory. A branch of mathematics created by wrong physics.
I think the idea of knots as a basis for everything has come and gone several times. One of those were in the 90s, which is when I became aware thanks to the excellent "Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity" by John Baez and Javier P Muniain, that was part of the "Series on Knots and Everything" [1]. Those are really intriguing ideas.
I had never heard of this before, and I find the idea absolutely delightful. As I understand it, the "knots" are stable vortices in the aether. It was popular from 1870 - 1890, and it blows my mind that only a few years later the electron was discovered (1897), and less than 50 years later (1938), the scanning electron microscope was invented! 1955 was when the atom was first imaged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_theory_of_the_atom