Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

Linky: Garrett Lisi may have solved Grand Unified Theory of nature. General Story

To sum up: recently solved E8 Lattice (the most complicated Lie Group), whose solution is 60 gigabytes (compressed) apparently matches very well with our current theory of subatomic particle & strong / weak / electric forces theory. Lisi proposes 20 new particles to fill out the lattice, which he claims describe gravity. To date no particles that cause gravity have yet been detected.

You can watch a Youtube video describing the theory in relative layman's terms here.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

I just wish our smartest scientists would spend a little less time thinking up huge untestable / very expensively testable theories with little practical application and more time working on things like the Microwave invisibility cloak etc.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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I just wish our smartest scientists would spend a little less time thinking up huge untestable / very expensively testable theories with little practical application and more time working on things like the Microwave invisibility cloak etc.

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I actually almost got involved with a very similar project a couple of years ago. It's pretty interesting stuff, and those metamaterials have other potentially nice applications as well (the most commonly cited one being high quality near-field lensing.) If somebody in the industrial world started working on this stuff, it's the kind of thing that I think would be right up my alley when I graduate.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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You can watch a Youtube video describing the theory in relative layman's terms here.

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QFBE

(Quoted for Brain Explode)

I enjoyed the pretty colors and movement of the video and how everything aligned, but I had to do some googling on my own to figure out what everything is. Very cool stuff though, once I wrapped my head around it.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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You can watch a Youtube video describing the theory in relative layman's terms here.

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QFBE

(Quoted for Brain Explode)

I enjoyed the pretty colors and movement of the video and how everything aligned, but I had to do some googling on my own to figure out what everything is. Very cool stuff though, once I wrapped my head around it.

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Yeah, that's why I linked the E8 article and the definition of a Lie Group before linking the video

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

wait so was this done by mathematicians, physicists, both or other?

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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wait so was this done by mathematicians, physicists, both or other?

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When you're talking about this brand of physics I think the distinctions are small and arbitrary. Witten did win a Fields Medal.

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wait so was this done by mathematicians, physicists, both or other?

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other. read the article, the dude was a surfer

[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

in all seriousness, gumpzilla is correct.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

woah

woah

woaaahhhhhhhhhh

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

I'm currently reading "A Brief History of Time" so this article is very interesting.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

Maybe^1000, then ya maybe. However very facinating.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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You can watch a Youtube video describing the theory in relative layman's terms here.

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QFBE

(Quoted for Brain Explode)

I enjoyed the pretty colors and movement of the video and how everything aligned, but I had to do some googling on my own to figure out what everything is. Very cool stuff though, once I wrapped my head around it.

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Yeah, that's why I linked the E8 article and the definition of a Lie Group before linking the video

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to make us more confused, right?

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to make us more confused, right?

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this article is about cutting edge nuclear physics and cutting edge math; it's going to be difficult to understand.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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I just wish our smartest scientists would spend a little less time thinking up huge untestable / very expensively testable theories with little practical application and more time working on things like the Microwave invisibility cloak, hoverboard, etc.

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Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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to make us more confused, right?

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this article is about cutting edge nuclear physics and cutting edge math; it's going to be difficult to understand.

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Maybe for you....

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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to make us more confused, right?

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this article is about cutting edge nuclear physics and cutting edge math; it's going to be difficult to understand.

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Maybe for you....

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for me or theblackkeys? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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PALO ALTO, Calif. — An international team of mathematicians has cracked a 120-year-old puzzle that researchers say is so complicated that its handwritten solution would cover the island of Manhattan.

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When stored in highly compressed form on a computer hard drive, the solution takes up 60 gigabytes

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did this jar with anyone else? More like one city block would be my guess.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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PALO ALTO, Calif. — An international team of mathematicians has cracked a 120-year-old puzzle that researchers say is so complicated that its handwritten solution would cover the island of Manhattan.

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When stored in highly compressed form on a computer hard drive, the solution takes up 60 gigabytes

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did this jar with anyone else? More like one city block would be my guess.

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60GB of highly compressed TEXT is a lot of numbers and letters imo.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

This is very cool.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

I showed this to a friend of mine who studies physics and then we did a little poking around on the internet. This is getting suspiciously little media attention and no mainstream academic attention and there are at least some people saying the guy is a total crackpot:

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

Sorry to ruin the fun.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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I showed this to a friend of mine who studies physics and then we did a little poking around on the internet. This is getting suspiciously little media attention and no mainstream academic attention and there are at least some people saying the guy is a total crackpot:

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

Sorry to ruin the fun.

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Lol that dude is such a jackass.


p.s. I mean his tone, not his knowledge or viewpoints.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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I showed this to a friend of mine who studies physics and then we did a little poking around on the internet. This is getting suspiciously little media attention and no mainstream academic attention and there are at least some people saying the guy is a total crackpot:

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

Sorry to ruin the fun.

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Lol that dude is such a jackass.


p.s. I mean his tone, not his knowledge or viewpoints.

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he's super arrogant but occasionally funny. his use of the phrase "cargo cult" to describe amateur scientists who latch on to small bits of theories they don't understand is pretty hilarious imo.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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I showed this to a friend of mine who studies physics and then we did a little poking around on the internet. This is getting suspiciously little media attention and no mainstream academic attention and there are at least some people saying the guy is a total crackpot:

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

Sorry to ruin the fun.

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Lol that dude is such a jackass.


p.s. I mean his tone, not his knowledge or viewpoints.

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he's super arrogant but occasionally funny. his use of the phrase "cargo cult" to describe amateur scientists who latch on to small bits of theories they don't understand is pretty hilarious imo.

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Ya rly, he's arrogant as hell but pretty entertaining with his acidic insults. His 'common crackpot's errors' ( http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/08/co...ts-errors.html ) blog is a pretty accurate depiction of all crackpots, not just theoretical physics crackpots.

Anybody that hasn't studied past elementary calculus and elementary physics (such as myself) is pretty much through the looking glass when it comes to this stuff, unfortunately. Even the majority of 'simple' explanations require the use of technical terminology that will be foreign without the acquired knowledge, no matter how intelligent the person is. This is the big reason crackpot stuff is sometimes accepted, the average person is wowed and intimidated by technical lingo.

Still, despite these regrettable shortcomings, i'm glad we're on the same page with regards to this:

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It is the same kind of "unification" as if you put stickers with elementary particles on a chessboard and argue that chess is the ultimate theory of everything. Kindergarten stuff.

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Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

hm, this just seems to be a very poorly reported story?

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"The theory is very young, and still in development," he(LISI!!) tells the Daily Telegraph. "Right now, I'd assign a low (but not tiny) likelihood to this prediction."

He hopes the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, currently being built on the Swiss-French border will find some of his 20 imaginary gravity-related particles.

"This is an all-or-nothing kind of theory — it's either going to be exactly right, or spectacularly wrong," Lisi tells New Scientist. "I'm the first to admit this is a long shot. But it ain't over till the LHC sings."

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thanks fox. way to bury that at the very bottom.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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I just wish our smartest scientists would spend a little less time thinking up huge untestable / very expensively testable theories with little practical application and more time working on things like the Microwave invisibility cloak etc.

[/ QUOTE ]http://content.answers.com/main/cont...isible_Man.jpg

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he's super arrogant but occasionally funny. his use of the phrase "cargo cult" to describe amateur scientists who latch on to small bits of theories they don't understand is pretty hilarious imo.

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Actually, Richard Feynman coined the phrase.

wiki link

Regarding the original story...I can't believe this story is getting so much media attention. At my undergrad school, the physics department was getting so many letters describing ideas like this, that they needed a secretary to sort out the crap from the real letters. Of course, a large portion of the letters came from the nearby mental institution. It's relatively easy to find semi-legitimate idiots like this guy.

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I have to sit through about two of these talks per month and tbh am really tired of hearing about this field of physics. I'm sure somebody will come up with a correct unification theory one day, but imo this shouldn't even be called physics for now. Even these guys admit that they are several orders of magnitude from ever testing these theories. It seems like just anybody could come up with one of these, just make sure your theory isn't testable and make the math hard enough that nobody will bother to challenge it.
Also these experiments are ridiculous, they could fund 5000 condensed matter/amo experiments for the price of the LHC. They will probably find the higgs boson in a couple of years, and it will be a great accomplishment and somebody will win the nobel prize, and then they will be clamoring to spend tens of billions to build the next thing that will allow them to set new upper limits on the validity of their theories. At least the euros fit the bill for this one, although the superconducting supercollider was LOL.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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PALO ALTO, Calif. — An international team of mathematicians has cracked a 120-year-old puzzle that researchers say is so complicated that its handwritten solution would cover the island of Manhattan.

[/ QUOTE ]
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When stored in highly compressed form on a computer hard drive, the solution takes up 60 gigabytes

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did this jar with anyone else? More like one city block would be my guess.

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60GB of highly compressed TEXT is a lot of numbers and letters imo.

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60 billion letters and numbers? I have an A4 page with some scribbles on it, definitely not tightly packed, say 600 characters, 1000 characters to a square foot. 10k characters to a square metre. 1 million characters in 100 square metres. 60 billion characters in 6,000,000 square metres, or 6 square kilometres.

I guess it's closer to Manhattan-size (60 square kilometres) than I thought, but still off by an order of magnitude. If the solution was written in binary it would be pretty close to accurate.

It just seemed like too much, everybody's hard drive fits 60GB+.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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I just wish our smartest scientists would spend a little less time thinking up huge untestable / very expensively testable theories with little practical application and more time working on things like the Microwave invisibility cloak etc.

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I have the same desire. It's also the reason why I support the flourishing of the market and the demise of the state. That way, people's actual values (like yours, because you said "I just wish") will get fullfilled.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

I think Assani Fisher has done some good work in this field

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

grand unified theory aka the G-UniT

LOLOLZ

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grand unified theory aka the G-UniT

LOLOLZ

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oot is two forums up [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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PALO ALTO, Calif. — An international team of mathematicians has cracked a 120-year-old puzzle that researchers say is so complicated that its handwritten solution would cover the island of Manhattan.

[/ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
When stored in highly compressed form on a computer hard drive, the solution takes up 60 gigabytes

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did this jar with anyone else? More like one city block would be my guess.

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60GB of highly compressed TEXT is a lot of numbers and letters imo.

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60 billion letters and numbers? I have an A4 page with some scribbles on it, definitely not tightly packed, say 600 characters, 1000 characters to a square foot. 10k characters to a square metre. 1 million characters in 100 square metres. 60 billion characters in 6,000,000 square metres, or 6 square kilometres.

I guess it's closer to Manhattan-size (60 square kilometres) than I thought, but still off by an order of magnitude. If the solution was written in binary it would be pretty close to accurate.

It just seemed like too much, everybody's hard drive fits 60GB+.

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But it could be so compressed that there are 500 thousand million characters instead of 60 thousand million.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

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PALO ALTO, Calif. — An international team of mathematicians has cracked a 120-year-old puzzle that researchers say is so complicated that its handwritten solution would cover the island of Manhattan.

[/ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
When stored in highly compressed form on a computer hard drive, the solution takes up 60 gigabytes

[/ QUOTE ]
did this jar with anyone else? More like one city block would be my guess.

[/ QUOTE ]

60GB of highly compressed TEXT is a lot of numbers and letters imo.

[/ QUOTE ]
60 billion letters and numbers? I have an A4 page with some scribbles on it, definitely not tightly packed, say 600 characters, 1000 characters to a square foot. 10k characters to a square metre. 1 million characters in 100 square metres. 60 billion characters in 6,000,000 square metres, or 6 square kilometres.

I guess it's closer to Manhattan-size (60 square kilometres) than I thought, but still off by an order of magnitude. If the solution was written in binary it would be pretty close to accurate.

It just seemed like too much, everybody's hard drive fits 60GB+.

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No.

Re: Grand Unified Theory Solved... Maybe
 

Weirdly, I have just finished a book about the history of mathematical symmetry. It infact has predictions by people like Feynamen saying that he wouldn't be surprised if some of the recent discoveries led to unified theories. It doesn't look to me much like this finalises anything, just that it could be a first step. I'm deeply unqualified though.

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solves the problem without resorting to exotic dimensions, string theory or exceptionally complex mathematics

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I was under the impression that the more complicated lie groups consisted of millions, billions, trillions of dimensions, or are they just the exceptions? All the simple symetry groups are already known very well anyway, it's only the higher dimension ones that aren't?


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Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi's theory

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That sounds like a good sign to me..

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Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi's theory

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That sounds like a good sign to me..

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Sounds intellectually appealing to me, which isn't the same thing. In fact, I think it sounds seductively sidetracking.

If you want my opinion, no one is even remotely close to understanding the true nature of the universe, as nice as it would be to think otherwise.