Today I found out about a new paper that
reports the generation of Möbius strips of optical polarization, which is very exciting. Unfortunately, the paper's abstract starts out in a very depressing manner that makes me cringe: "Möbius strips are three-dimensional geometrical structures, fascinating for their peculiar property..."
Nooooooo!
Although does need three dimensions embed a Möbius strip in an ambient (extrinsic) space, a Möbius strip is a
two-dimensional manifold.
(Tip of the cap to
Physics Today for their Facebook post of
a popular article about the new discovery. Notice the comment about the number of dimensions in the correction. In this case, the popular piece has done better than the paper's abstract.)
