Now with the E8 beast mapped, someone seems to have found a very handy use for it; nothing less than a TOE! Check this:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Roger Highfield
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape."
What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8.
Lisi's breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8's structure matched his own. "My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"
What Lisi had realised was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8's 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity. ..
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Full article:
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything - Telegraph
Lisi's paper:
Front: [arXiv:0711.0770] An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything
