Thursday, November 15, 2007

Theory of Everything



It is about time. A surf bum has come up with a unified theory of everything, using the E8 as his inspiration.

The E8 root system consists of 240 vectors in an eight-dimensional space. Those vectors are the vertices (corners) of an eight-dimensional object called the Gosset polytope 421.In the 1960s, Peter McMullen drew (by hand) a 2-dimensional representation of the Gosset polytope 421. The image shown above was computer-generated by John Stembridge, based on McMullen's drawing.
Quote:
"Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder.

In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. "Being poor sucks," Lisi says. "It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month."

Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.

Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year." Quoted from the Telegraph See full text here