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Knots can now be tied systematically in the microscopic world. A team of scientists led by Uroš Tkalec from the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana (Slovenia), who has been working at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen (Germany) since September 2010, has now found a way to create every imaginable knot inside a liquid crystal. Starting points of the new method are tiny silica microspheres confined in thin liquid crystal layers. Surrounding these microspheres, a net of fine lines is formed where the molecular orientation of the liquid crystal is altered. The researchers discovered a method to twist and link these lines in such a manner as to create every knot imaginable.