How a Surfer Dude Stunned the World of Science With the 'Theory of Everything'

E8 looks like an atom! Hmmmmmm....

Well, as a dreamer... I went one step further, and tried to peg the rubix cube as well as the 20 reference points for inversion. I hadn't even heard of this guy... I started with the mathematics of Marko Rodin and physics behind The Resonance Project. Have at it...




blog.myspace.com...




Hope this sheds some light on a few more things!

Originally posted by WatchNLearn
Yes, I accept they may get crack pots approaching them all the time - but I am able to talk their language (mathematics) and I was able to demonstrate that I am right.

You do realize, of course, that that's what all the crackpots say too.

They don't go up to scientists and say "OH BY THE WAY, I HAPPEN TO BE INCORRECT AND POSSIBLY DELUDED INTO BELIEVING WHAT I'VE WRITTEN HERE, SO TAKE THAT AS YOU MAY" If they aren't out for attention or money, they're probably quite sincere in believing that they have the answer.

There's a good chance you're wrong, proposing something that's come up hundreds of times in the past, and simply don't know it. I'm not flaming, nor claiming I'm qualified to judge, but I see this sort of thing happen in all kinds of fields, like art, business, music, or even simple physics. Chances are, your math isn't as solid as you think.

Of course, they probably don't even read your letters. If I got something like that, I'd put on my best 0.o face for a half second, and then throw it out with all the junk mail. It's not fear of being proved wrong, it's that random contributions from random strangers aren't the sort of thing worth looking at.

I mean, sure some of those E-mails really could have a genuine offer for a genuine product which will increase the size and sensitivity of my sexual organs. Doesn't mean I'll ever read one just in case.

reply to post by UKWO1Phot


Thank you for the video I think I got some of what he is trying to say he sees the universe as almost a hologram. As these facets spin we get to see parts of e8 symmetry. We see the interactions caused but not whats causing them. Like a hologram on a credit card we see the image it creates though light interaction. But imagine if yo could only look at a small portion of the hologram it would look like a random light interaction.. If I am understanding his point in an eighth dimension we would be abled to see all the interactions and possibilities. Now I could be off way off but I think that is what he was trying to describe to the mediator because he kept grasping to understand how it relates to matter and hes trying to explain it isnt matter at all just our perception of a spinning e8.

Interesting theory / mind experiment, though he is just talking the same talk as everyone else out there. He doesnt really bring anything new to the fold so to speak, nothing that can be tested or observed, atleast.

As far as I can tell he is just letting everyone else know his look on things without providing any real data or proof, afterall thats one of the basics of quantum physics. Anything goes, nothing is impossible so what ever we come up with cant be wrong. The whole field sounds fishy to me but hey im not one of them so I just dont understand the thruth behind it...

Heres a link to the source material:

arxiv.org...

I'm still reading it, so will try to sum it up later.

Yeah, he's a surfer dude, but one with a doctorate in physics.

here's the abstract:

Abstract: All felds of the standard model and gravity are unified as an E8 principal bundle connection. A non-compact real form of the E8 Lie algebra has G2 and F4 subalgebras which break down to strong su(3), electroweak su(2) x u(1), gravitational so(3,1), the frame-Higgs, and three generations of fermions related by triality. The interactions and dynamics of these 1-form and Grassmann valued parts of an E8 superconnection are described by the curvature and action over a four dimensional base manifold.

The summing up could take awhile, lol...31 pages of this.

[edit on 5-2-2009 by apacheman]

What you talkin' 'bout Willis?

Wow - and this guys lives his life just doing what he enjoys most. He really does have it all figured out.

What would be so damn cool? The fact that he is actually right, think about it! that would mean that even a boarder bum could solve one of the biggest mysteries in astro physics

Not to detract from the importance and significance of all this... but did anyone feel like they were in a highschool english class listening to one of the potheads talk about kaleidoscopes?

On a more serious note, I understand that this could potentially be big time stuff. But could someone explain to me how this is going to affect our current view on space-time? In other words, what will this do to better humanity?

reply to post by dogg85


A boarder-bum physicist, you mean. He IS a legitimate scientist with a PHD. Most scientists don't spend all their time in lab coats, hanging out in labs.

That isn't to say I'm convinced he's got the real deal here. I eagerly await evidence confirming or denying it. He's got a grant to look into it, but I expect that some of the more critical pieces of evidence will come from the results of ordinary high-energy physics.

These are exciting times in science. Though, to be fair, you could say that about any point in the last 300 years.

reply to post by WatchNLearn


If you want me to look at it I could evaluate it and run bits of it by math and physics professors. Otherwise, you were probably just wrong.

And it' Nobel.

Here is his talk that he gave at TED in February of 2008:

www.ted.com...

Amazing stuff.

Like all other physical theory, Lisi's is just another model of percieved physical reality.

Newton's model was 3-dimensional. Then Einstien's 4-dimensional representation, or model, etc, etc ...

Lisi's model, as has already been mentioned somewhere in this thread, happens to be identical to E8, described by some as, 'the most complicated object in mathematics.'

But these opinions about complexity vary from expert to expert. For example, many researchers have claimed the Mendelbrot Set is the most complex object in mathematics, etc, etc ...

Anyway, Lisi's model happens to have about 248-dimensions. And through various group transofrmations of various catagories of projections of E8 Lisi was initially remarkably successful at achieving the same kinds of symmetries with regard to several important fundamental particles as the mainstream quantum mechanical model made famous by Einstien.

And, a note here about the term particle. A particle in a physical theory is just a part of the model. It's not at all like there's all these itsy-bitsy teeny-tiny bb's whirling around. Particles are just a convenient way of conceptualizing a theory which is able to accuratly predict how the real world behaves. At the macroscopic scale indeed there are particles, but at the atomic-scale and below they aren't really particles as we might think of particles in our daily world. They are certainly not little solid bits of matter!!. This is the whole point of theorectical physics!. They are trying to find out what matter really is!. And so all the models are merely that - just conveniences for framing a theory ... I know - it's confusing ...

But, whatever, it's been a couple of years since we've heard anything from Lisi, in terms of new papers. And lots of others were initially captivated by his totally new representation ( model ) ... we haven't heard anything from anybody on this for a few years.

The technicalities certainly must be monumental. And Lisi himself never expressed any opinions that this was it, the Theory of Everything. It was others that suggested that it could be. And the media took over from there.

If Lisi expressed anything about his theory at all, it was that he had no idea how he was going to move it forward from it's infancy, the basic expressions of first-order symmetries which matched the classical quantum models. As I recall, the work he had left to do involved finding a way to express 2nd- and 3rd-order symmetries as well.

Maybe I didn't get that last part right, and I'm not a theoretical physicist by any stretch of the imagination. I just write too much

There's another name in this new physics story as well, somebody who isn't heard of at all anymore. But Grigory Perleman recieved quite a lot of attention in the popular press back in 2006 when he won the Fields award for solving the Poincaré conjecture, which had been an open problem since 1904, and also the most important problem in topology. Perleman's popular fame came not so much for his genuinely first-order mathematical genius, but for the fact that he refused the Fields award with it's 1-million dollar cash award!




Truly an eccentric genius !

Perleman also was working on outside the box new physics models and I forget the details, but roughly speaking he and another individual had developed the theory to the point where they were able to arrive at several commonly accepted funamental physical constants. Something Lisi was nowhere near doing when his paper was published in 2006. Perleman's work had also progressed to the point where they were making testable predictions about certain phenomena. I seem to recall their model had 6- or 8-dimensions and was somehow different from standard string theory.

Oh, I'm done now ... jeeeeshhhh ! Where did all that come from ?



[edit on 6-2-2009 by visible_villain]

Part of the excitement is that it does not require highly complex mathematics to understand. In the arcane world of particle physics, a simplified theory that actually makes sense, is a fine rarity indeed. Many scientists have speculated through the years that when the “Holy Grail” of physics was found, it would be beautiful, simple and easily understood.

Simple. If you have a Phd in maths and physics of course

What I find more interesting is that the guy is poor

I have a PhD in physics, and I don't understand any of it either---then again it's not my field.

My impression from other physicist's reviews (and what Garrett says himself) is that contrary to the hype, it's just barely a start for a true "complete theory". I.e. it is significantly incomplete (additional physics needs to be put in) and has many problems---just like all other really advanced Theories of Everything.

Then again that appears to be something that will take thousands of physicists a long time to work out---there will probably be no Einstein or Newton who dropped astonishing, enormous advances apparently ab initio (general relativity and classical mechanics) all on their own.

On the upside, it is one example of a very new but emerging trend that I favor in theoretical particle physics---a willingness to pursue directions other than strings, at long last.

In some ways the Lisi framework is a bit of a throwback to group-theory oriented "Grand Unified Theories" (which contrary to their name didn't unify gravity), pursuing roughly along the lines which explained the quark generations and the Standard Model.

Experimental tests are important---and these days this has to include astrophysics:

1) Dark Matter
2) Dark Energy
3) The Pioneer gravitaitonal anomaly

I knew Garrett a little bit at UCSD. For a short while we had the same advisor but he switched into doing something different. He was definitely a bright guy, and looked exactly as you'd expect a So Cal surfer to look (he's actually a windsurfer---a little higher class of surfers, you know, fluid mechanics & vectors and all that).

I envied him a little bit because he got to use the NeXTStation.

Here's the real picture of Perleman

reply to post by mbkennel

The Pioneer gravitaitonal anomaly

Couldn't that be caused by a nearby red-dwarf nobody's supposed to know about ?

Hmm, i read through that and agree with many that it is somewhat hard to understand.. But in my opinion and I think many will agree.. The large hadron collider failed last time, why are we wasting money on it again, Wasn't it already predetermined a fact that inside each electron their is a positron and an anti-positron that both Have seperate "mini-electrons" inside them and a possibility of even an electron cloud.. that would be so small it would take us another 100 years to be able to observe?

Anyways.. my point is.. I feel Nassim Haramein is MUCH closer to having a theory of everything than this guy.. We need to be looking for a fundamental pattern and not a fundamental particle..

Cheers,

Ryan

Isn't this around 2 years old? O_o I heard about this surfer 2 years ago.

What isn't mentioned in the story is also this...

If the universe really does take on the form of the E8 shape, it would have all kinds of implications and could possibly help us explain the big-bang better. For our universe to exist now as an E8, then it must have existed since it's birth as an E8 geometrical form. It's possible that using the E8 shape as a guide we could potentially figure out what caused the big-bang altogether (not to mention how elementary particles came into existence shortly after the big-bang occured).

Food for thought..

-ChriS

reply to post by BlasteR


I suppose the E8 theory pours water on the Big Bang theory as the Big Bang suggests life started from no where. But you need space for a big bang so E8 explains space. Damn my head hurts i give in.