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| Science & Technology |
| Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything |
| 2007-11-14 |
| An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which as received rave reviews from scientists. 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 (when he slept in a jungle yurt). 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. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #12 Thx! |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-11-14 23:54 |
| #11 "Secrets of the universe" > COMET HOLMES - something = unknown force, action, or factor "jostled" = diverted Holmes into its present orbit. DREAM/VISION > 'Twas GOD + MOTHER MARY. RUMORMILLNEWS > IS COMET HOLMES THE BLUE KACHINA/STAR OF HOPI [Indian]PROPHECY? The Hopi "Twin Brothers" to be followed by the awesome, Earth-and Man-humbling "Red Purifier". IOW, SOMETHING BIG MAY COME OUT OF THE GALACTIC CENTER/MASSIVE BLACK HOLE(S). HOPI "TWIN BROTHERS" > ARTHURIAN-MERLINIAN "FLYING DRAGONS"??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-11-14 23:48 |
| #10 Centriary forces? I mostly admire physics from a safe distance, but I haven't heard of that one, JosephM. I think Dr. Lisi would prefer the beer, based on his surfing/snow boarding lifestyle. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-11-14 23:19 |
| #9 All of these conversations sound like watching "Numbers" on Friday night and not having Charlie giving us a comparison using a pizza, or some such thing. |
| Posted by: Sherry 2007-11-14 23:15 |
| #8 "Associated with gravity" > Centrifugal versus Centripetal versus Centriary forces. WILL HE PREFER $$$, OR A LIFETIME SUPPLY OF FREE BUDWEISER??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-11-14 19:40 |
| #7 From the paper's summary: The theory proposed in this paper represents a comprehensive unification program, describing all fields of the standard model and gravity as parts of a uniquely beautiful mathematical structure. The principal bundle connection and its curvature describe how the E8 manifold twists and turns over spacetime, reproducing all known fields and dynamics through pure geometry. Some aspects of this theory are not yet completely understood, and until they are it should be treated with appropriate skepticism. However, the current match to the standard model and gravity is very good. Future work will either strengthen the correlation to known physics and produce successful predictions for the LHC, or the theory will encounter a fatal contradiction with nature. The lack of extraneous structures and free parameters ensures testable predictions, so it will either succeed or fail spectacularly. If E8 theory is fully successful as a theory of everything, our universe is an exceptionally beautiful shape. Seems like he's doing good science: he can be proved wrong. And as others have noted, the colored geometrical pictures in the paper are very pretty. If true, then the creation of our universe was a remarkably beautiful and economical event. |
| Posted by: KBK 2007-11-14 19:21 |
| #6 In his own words (lots of amusing give and take): This is an "all or nothing" kind of theory -- meaning it's going to end up agreeing with and predicting damn near everything, or it's wrong. At this stage of development, it could go either way. Well, the discussion is off and running: Needless to say, the visually intriguing and colorful paper is a huge joke. The first place where I exploded in laughter was the equation (1.1). It says, using words, the following: "My connection of everything = connection for gravity + weak force + strong force + electromagnetism + electron + neutrino + up-quark + down-quark + other-generations" That's pretty cute! :-) The author is not constrained by any old "conventions" and simply adds Grassmann fields together with ordinary numbers i.e. bosons with fermions, one-forms with spinors and scalars. He is just so skillful that he can add up not only apples and oranges but also fields of all kinds you could ever think of. Every high school senior excited about physics should be able to see that the paper is just pure junk. I understood these things when I was 14. It can get brutal out there... His website. John Baez does some finger exercises and provides an exective summary: Each point in the complexified octonionic projective plane gives a different way of splitting the Lie algebra of E6 into a bosonic part and a fermionic part. The fermionic part is just what we need to describe one generation of left-handed Standard Model fermions. The bosonic part is just what we need for the gauge bosons of the Spin(10) grand unified theory, together with a copy of u(1), which describes the complex structure of the left-handed Standard Model fermions. |
| Posted by: KBK 2007-11-14 19:05 |
| #5 On the one hand, these spiffy new theories of the Universe which are true no absolutely really this time fer sher come along about once per decade. On the other hand, this has something to do with something called a bifurcating Coxeter-Dynkin diagram (per gorb's second link), so I hope this one pans out, just so we can go around talking about our bifurcating Coxeter-Dynkins. |
| Posted by: Angie Schultz 2007-11-14 18:54 |
| #4 Short answer to gorb: No. His paper is available at the arxiv site. I skimmed it, but I'd need to work through it in detail before I could say yea or nay or maybe. |
| Posted by: James 2007-11-14 18:44 |
| #3 Very, very, very cool. To think Daddy saw Einstein's theory of relativity as a young man, and gets to see this before he dies. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-11-14 18:41 |
#2  Can anyone explain how this construct models the universe so well in layman's terms? It seems to be a construct with 8 degrees of freedom each with 32 sub-dimensions/contours somehow to come up with 248 "dimensions". Do I understand this correctly? I found this on wiki: E8 Lie group, E8 polytope, and polytope. If nothing else, at least check out the polytope link for some cool graphics! :-) |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-11-14 17:47 |
| #1 Hitchhiker's guide to the Universe spelled out the theory of everything quite nicely: '42' |
| Posted by: USN,Ret. 2007-11-14 17:23 |