An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

[mauitian]

I'm not sure yet whether all the attention is good, or if all the hype will have a negative impact, but this has certainly been a strange week. The interest in my work among physicists has been building steadily over the past few months. I've been presenting at conferences, getting invited to cool places, and exchanging emails with some of the best

Comments

[distractme]

This is all very exciting

[clevermynnie]

Congratulations on all this attention! I know it must be big news because my dad actually e-mailed me your paper this morning as a point of interest.

[mauitian]

Thanks. The attention is a bit much.

[mathemajician]

You are currently the number 2 story on digg.com

:-)

[mauitian]

Damn, I was number one an hour ago.

[scottsch]

That's cool! I tried reading up on E8 on wikipedia (where, by the way, your paper is now the first external link). I get that a manifold is a a bunch of points, sort of like an N-dimensional volume; and a lie group is (approximately) a family of operations (like matrix operations of a certain size) with a number of values, and the set of all variable values is the set of points that is the lie group. I am trying to learn more about this, but I'm having trouble penetrating the connected manifold of terminology, which is not exceptionally simple or even abelian. What is a better angle of attack? Should I start with E6? F4 or G2?

It's too bad you're not coming down to SD for TG. (Or are you?) I'd like to understand more about E8 than that it is pretty.

[scottsch]

Ok, I grok the 240 roots of E8: in 8 dimensions, +/- 1 in 2 coordinates and 0 in the others (112 roots), and +1/2 in an even # of coordinates and -1/2 in the rest (128 roots). They have half-integral dot products with each other. If you reflect a root through the hyperplane of another root, you get a third root. Does your theory associate each particle with an E8 root?

What should I try to learn about E8 next? It looks like there are a jillion aspects and applications of this thing.

[mauitian]

Yes, either pick one of the jillion, or start with a much smaller group! G2 is good, and SO(3) and SU(3) are good small groups with which to get the hang of this stuff.

[nicolassher]

I'm sorry, but as far as my present understanding allows, I am under the impression that I am unable to hang around for twenty generations until science finally positions itself to address fundamental issues concerning the nature of my present very personal existence, issues about which I must have reliable information in my current lifetime if that lifetime is to have any meaning to me.

[kalistrya]

Heh. Now you're on /. too.

[mauitian]

W00t!