PhD Surf Bum Proposes New Unified Theory

[Badger]

Here's a link to the story (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox).

Does anyone here know anything about this that they could dumb down to layman's terms? It seems to relate highly to this E8 pattern. another link (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml;jsessionid=VIIYPMREBLQOHQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQ YIV0?xml=/connected/2007/03/19/ecpattern19.xml), about E8.

"E8 is the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional. E8 itself is 248-dimensional."

So if anyone can explain 248 dimensions to me I'd appreciate it. I'm an EE so I have some background in physics, but this stuff seems to be a little beyond me.

[Borodog]

Lee Smolin is not an idiot. If he likes it, and it is predicting things like the masses of the fundamental particles, it is definitely worth looking at.

[mickeyg13]

I have T-shirt that has the Dynkin diagrams for E8 and several other Lie algebras on it, and I'm not ashamed to admit that.

[thylacine]

[ QUOTE ]
Lee Smolin is not an idiot. If he likes it, and it is predicting things like the masses of the fundamental particles, it is definitely worth looking at.

[/ QUOTE ]

It does not predict masses (explicitly, yet). But it has no free parameters (e.g. coupling constants), so it is very constrained, and would be testable if the theory could be developed further.

[Badger]

So is anything about E8, or how this theory works explainable to the general public?

[thylacine]

Links:

The paper

http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770

Technical stuff:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week253.html

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/oct.pdf (long)

Blogs:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=196498

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/theoretically-simple-exception-of.html

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html

You will note that opinions vary considerably.

Enjoy! /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Lee Smolin is not an idiot. If he likes it, and it is predicting things like the masses of the fundamental particles, it is definitely worth looking at.

[/ QUOTE ]

It does not predict masses (explicitly, yet). But it has no free parameters (e.g. coupling constants), so it is very constrained, and would be testable if the theory could be developed further.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah. That isn't quite so exciting then. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[AvivaSimplex]

[ QUOTE ]
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html


[/ QUOTE ]
This guy is an enormous dick.

[JMAnon]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html


[/ QUOTE ]
This guy is an enormous dick.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. But that doesn't mean he's wrong.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html


[/ QUOTE ]
This guy is an enormous dick.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. But that doesn't mean he's wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

He has a long track record of screwing up some really simple stuff and has a habit of disagreeing with mainstream scientists on a variety of topics. It would be wise to look for other sources of information even if it's only to double check what he writes.

[thylacine]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html


[/ QUOTE ]
This guy is an enormous dick.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. But that doesn't mean he's wrong.

[/ QUOTE ]

He has a long track record of screwing up some really simple stuff and has a habit of disagreeing with mainstream scientists on a variety of topics. It would be wise to look for other sources of information even if it's only to double check what he writes.

[/ QUOTE ]

You've got me curious. What is it he screwed up? And who does he disagree with? You're talking about Motl right? I thought he was with the mainstream string theorists, though clearly not part of the mainstream personality-wise.

[Duke]

I came in here to see if there was discussion about this topic, and kinda hoped that Borodog would have weighed in by now.

I'm a huge fan of symmetry arguments for pretty much everything, so I'm obviously pretty interested in this work. It'll take me another couple weeks to really understand this theory enough to draw my own conclusions, as I'd never heard of E8 or about half of the previous cited work that they're talking about.

I believe that I recall the dude at arstechnica having huge problems with the paper doing things like assigning velocities to energies, and other nonsense. When it comes to this sort of thing though, some sorts of nonsense get me even more excited about the theories, and I'm not yet decided if this is good nonsense or bad.

Going through the paper, though, it looks like Boro might be a bit unhappy about the units.

Anyhow, I'll be checking back in periodically on this topic specifically.

[thylacine]

[ QUOTE ]
Links:

The paper

http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770

Technical stuff:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week253.html

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/oct.pdf (long)

Blogs:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=196498

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/theoretically-simple-exception-of.html

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html

You will note that opinions vary considerably.

Enjoy! /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[/ QUOTE ]


This thing is causing quite a stir. Some more links:

http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/11/16/garrett-lisis-theory-of-everything/

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/001505.html

[Metric]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Links:

The paper

http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770

Technical stuff:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week253.html

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/oct.pdf (long)

Blogs:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=617

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=196498

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/11/theoretically-simple-exception-of.html

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html

You will note that opinions vary considerably.

Enjoy! /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[/ QUOTE ]


This thing is causing quite a stir. Some more links:

http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/11/16/garrett-lisis-theory-of-everything/

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/001505.html

[/ QUOTE ]
It would be cool if this idea works, but I personally can't say much about it one way or another -- I've tried to get interested in unification schemes, but it's basically all group theory, trying out various ways to fit the standard model gauge group into something less disjoint and weird. I zone out on this kind of task after a while.

[thylacine]

[ QUOTE ]

It would be cool if this idea works, but I personally can't say much about it one way or another -- I've tried to get interested in unification schemes, but it's basically all group theory, trying out various ways to fit the standard model gauge group into something less disjoint and weird. I zone out on this kind of task after a while.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, it seems this paper is doing a variation of something quite traditional. With anything like this I would always want to know, where does this group come from, and why this group instead of that one? I don't think these groups and symmetries are fundamental. They are created by dynamic processes. In other words, I believe in symmetry making, not symmetry breaking.

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
came in here to see if there was discussion about this topic, and kinda hoped that Borodog would have weighed in by now.

[/ QUOTE ]

This sort of esoteric stuff is so far out of my field that I might as well be a plumber. I always defer to Metric on crazy [censored] like this.

[LeadbellyDan]

My comology lecturer pooh poohed this guy.