in it, which is impossible. Another argument for the impossibility of circular realizations, by Helge Tverberg, uses inversive geometry to transform any three circles so that one of them becomes a line, making it easier to argue that the other two circles do not link with it to form the Borromean rings. However, the Borromean rings can be realized using ellipses. These may be taken to be of arbitrarily small eccentricity: no matter how close to being circular their shape may be, as long as they are not perfectly circular, they can form Borromean links if suitably positioned. A realization of the Borromean rings by three mutually perpendicular golden rectangles can be found within a regular icosahedron by connecting three opposite pairs of its edges. Every three unknotted polygons in Euclidean space may be combined, after a suitable scaling transformation, to form the Borromean rings. If all three polygons are planar, then scaling is not needed. In particular, because the Borromean rings can be realized by three triangles, the minimum number of sides possible for each of its loops, the stick number of the Borromean rings is nine. More generally, Matthew Cook has conjectured that any three unknotted simple closed curves in space, not all circles, can be combined without scaling to form the Borromean rings. After Jason Cantarella suggested a possible counterexample, Hugh Nelson Howards weakened the conjecture to apply to any three planar curves that are not all circles. On the other hand, although there are infinitely many Brunnian links with three links, the Borromean rings are the only one that can be formed from three convex curves. Ropelength In knot theory, the ropelength of a knot or link is the shortest length of flexible rope (of radius one) that can realize it. Mathematically, such a realization can be described by a smooth curve whose radius-one tubular neighborhood avoids self-intersections. The minimum ropelength of the Borromean rings has not been proven, but the smallest value that has been attained is realized by three copies of a 2-lobed planar curve. Although it resembles an earlier candidate for minimum ropelength, constructed from four circular arcs of radius two, it is slightly modified from that shape, and is composed from 42 smooth pieces defined by elliptic integrals, making it shorter by a fraction of a percent than the piecewise-circular realization. It is this realization, conjectured to minimize ropelength, that was used