Friday, December 18, 2009

Early Buddhist Art and American Beer

Barbara O'Brien at the Buddhist blog brings us the story of an apparent link between 2nd century Buddhist art from Gandhara and a quantum physics theory based on Borromean rings. Borromean rings are an arrangement of three interlaced rings, no one of which can be taken away without breaking the other two.

The jist of the story is proof of something conjectured decades ago: "[Russian physics researcher Vitaly] Efimov theorized an analog to the rings using particles: Three particles (such as atoms or protons or even quarks) could be bound together in a stable state, even though any two of them could not bind without the third."

Of course that means there's a link between early Buddhist art and American beer...

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