PhD Surf Bum Proposes New Unified Theory

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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/200...eption-of.html

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

You will note that opinions vary considerably.

Enjoy! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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

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

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

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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.