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

V

[anonymous]

Garrett, your paper at arXiv 0711.0770 shows "Submitted on 6 Nov 2007".
If arXiv posts papers the day after you send them there
does that mean that you wrote it and sent it in on 5 November 2007 ?
If so,
did you have in mind Guy Fawkes Day and V ?

Tony Smith

Re: V

[mauitian]

Remember, remember the sixth of November...

I had some trouble with the TeX that hung me up a day.

E8(8) and Distler etc

[anonymous]

Garrett, this is a long comment (see my PS at the end

Re: E8(8) and Distler etc

[mauitian]

You are scaring my friends, but that's OK.

I know Jacques didn't refute it, in fact I think it's more interesting if it's in E8(8) than in E IX, because the representations are more involved.

But I am a little confused. My understanding of E8(8) is that the Killing form is such that the 120 have positive signature and the 128 have negative signature. So so(16) is a subalgebra. But Jacques said so(7,1)+so(8) is also a subalgebra... do you know how that works?

Re: E8(8) and Distler etc

[anonymous]

As to "... Jacques said so(7,1)+so(8) is also a subalgebra ..." of E8(8), as well as so(16

Re: E8(8) and Distler etc

[anonymous]

Garrett,
I wrote up a paper about your E8 model and how it might look in terms of E8(8),
and put it on dotMac at

web.mac.com/t0ny5m17h/Site/E8GLTSCl8Cl16.pdf

and mentioned it in blog comments (including Jacques Distler's blog).

Please be aware that, as I said at the end of the abstract
"... Any errors in this paper are not Garrett Lisi's fault. ...".

Tony Smith

Feynman's grandmother

[john_of_sparta]

does E8/LIE/whatever have an explanation that will be able
to be explained to Richard Feynman's grandmother? or mine?
if so, what is it?
thanks.

Re: Feynman's grandmother

[mauitian]

I put up some autobiographical information, and descriptions of the theory, here:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum.php?action=topic&id=108&PHPSESSID=a9fb11f849f829fafa0d32379f42a72f

http://fqxi.org/community/forum.php?action=topic&id=107&PHPSESSID=a9fb11f849f829fafa0d32379f42a72f

But, suitable for Feynman's grandmother? I dunno, maybe, I imagine Feynman's grandmother was pretty sharp.

[sylwia]

I'm an artist, and I don't understand the complex terms and math in your theory at all, hahaha. I do however, understand the elegance, and I think it's extraordinary. I've never heard of E8 before, but looking at the picture in the Telegraph article brought tears to my eyes. It's truly beautiful, which I can understand in a way I can't explain with math or words.

:)

[kkatie]

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/107 :)
Might help some.

[mauitian]

Or wait for the book. :)

http://xkcd.com/15/

[kkatie]

Oh wow. An xkcd aficionado too?
I found your blog last night off of your website. I'm a geology major but I have this inexplicable fascination with particle physics and unification theories, all of which I really don't understand beyond high school AP level, but am really interested in nonetheless. And so I was looking around to see if there was anything new going on with your theory---I read about it in November with everyone else and, well, you know, it's very very beautiful, and I haven't heard anything since. So then I found your blog and really went all fangirlish and now here I am blathering on to Garrett Lisi. I'm kind of in complete awe.

[mauitian]

Thanks Michael, good article.