E8

I’m posting twice tonight because I was extremely lazy over this Thanksgiving holyday. Like Peter Gibbons in Office Space: “I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything I thought it would be.”

In any case, I’m making up for it now. I’ve updated my twitter and now I’m writing about something I found utterly flabbergasting last week. I am talking, ofcourse, (or maybe not of course) about the supposedly unified theory of everything, or E8 as it is being called.

A number of people have blogged about this, but apparently a guy called Garett Lisi, a lone physicist, has unified the two theories of physics – the holy grail of science.

Apparently he did so using geometry… very very complicated geometry. Now, I don’t quite understand anything in his research paper – “The fermions fit together perfectly in chiral representations under graviweak so(7; 1), and the frame-Higgs has all the correct interactions” – you can see why.

I’ve saved the research document, “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” to my google groups, which you can find here. Its really not that simple. At least I think so.

I wonder what this will do to science. First of all, the theory needs to be tested and verified, but if it does prove to be accurate then we are looking at history in the making. I imagine it would have significant consequences in academia and eventually, as it almost always happens, what starts as theory and lab work results in practical applications. I can’t wait for commercial nanomaterials and a functioning space elevator.

If anyone can explain what this document says please let me know! Same goes if you have any idea as to the implications of the theory, practical or otherwise.

By the way, according to this document and Lisi’s theory, this is the shape of the universe, and it is the geometric formula that unifies all physical forces: