Since everyone's going on about the LHC...

[alien_radio]

I'm not going to. While it is exciting, and while was it amusing about 8 months ago to ironically discuss the species threatening nature of the hunt for the Higgs boson, thousand of retards going "LOL END OF DER WOLRDZ1111", or panicking "OMG WE'RE GONNA DIE", has kind of taken the shine off it

Comments

[nationelectric]

Hey, interesting! Thanks!

[siranui]

There are a few problems though, not least of all that it’s pure conjecture

[alien_radio]

I suspect that it's more of a useful abstraction tool for mapping relationships and interactions and telling us where to look than a complete theory, I'm sure the mappings themselves will require refinement, because I suspect that while useful and accurate on subsets of E8 in one projection when rotated through other dimensions in the full model hidden aspects of underlying principles will come to the fore.

Think periodic table, the elements were arbitrarily mapped into a geometric construct of groups based on similarity in properties. The original was inaccurate in the detail, but the principle was sound, and SIMPLE.

Further experimentation has shown further drawbacks with the model, but there's still some emergent geometry there.

most of the physics and chemistry equations even at A level is nothing but simplified and abstrated generalisttions of the hard core equations.

I suspect this is an exceptionally powerful abstraction.

[siranui]

It would be a powerful model if it was a two or three dimensional relationship model.

Sadly, it has eight, which makes it only really useful to people, who can already grasp the relationships without the need for such a model. If fact, I'd say it's far easier to grasp the relationships 'as is' than to really get to grasp with all the mathematical concepts you need to fully understand E8.

It's basically like having a four-dimensional space-time tube map, instead of just using a two dimensional one and a timetable.

[siranui]

Please excuse the typos and misplaced comas. I was eating a doughnut which may or may not be a three dimensional representation of the shape of the universe.

Don't ask me what the jam filling is.