Quote:

E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape."
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What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8.
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Lisi's breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8's structure matched his own. "My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"

What Lisi had realised was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8's 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity.

Physicists have long puzzled over why elementary particles appear to belong to families, but this arises naturally from the geometry of E8, he says. So far, all the interactions predicted by the complex geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world. "How cool is that?" he says.

The crucial test of Lisi's work will come only when he has made testable predictions. Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up.

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

"For comparison, I think the chances are higher that LHC will see some of these particles than it is that the LHC will see superparticles, extra dimensions, or micro black holes as predicted by string theory. I hope to get more (and different) predictions, with more confidence, out of this E8 Theory over the next year, before the LHC comes online."

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elbisivni said:

E₈

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Ego Death said:

The universe is like a wave, man...

Anyone know where we can read his thesis?

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elbisivni said:

E₈

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That is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. 

WScottsdale said:

I find it very interesting that it is the Flower of Life. Not the E8 thing, but on page 5 of the pdf.

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truekimbo2 said:

i am very scared of mathmaticians.

we see fractals and grids and mandalas and so on and we're like "whoa dude, i'm seeing infinity bro"

mathmaticians have like a hundred thousand sets of patterns like that in their head and they know how they inter-relate and how they relate to real life and so and and so on.
they're fucking scarey.  i can barely handle a single large pattern, while they're juggling tons of them.

also i don't know shit and my brain hurts after 10 seconds of reading about math, these people spend their lives doing it!

math makes dmt look like ginger beer.

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QFT    I love it!