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Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
Posted on Saturday, November 17, 2007 (CST) by Thoth
 An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists. Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).
In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. "Being poor sucks," Lisi says. "It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month." Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.
Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.
Although the
work of 39 year old Garrett Lisi still has a way to go to convince the
establishment, let alone match the achievements of Albert Einstein, the
two do have one thing in common: Einstein also began his great
adventure in theoretical physics while outside the mainstream
scientific establishment, working as a patent officer, though failed to
achieve the Holy Grail, an overarching explanation to unite all the
particles and forces of the cosmos.
Now Lisi, currently in
Nevada, has come up with a proposal to do this. Lee Smolin at the
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario,
Canada, describes Lisi's work as "fabulous". "It is one of the most
compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years," he says.
"Although he cultivates a
bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time
into working the complexities of this structure out over several
years," Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph.
"Some incredibly beautiful
stuff falls out of Lisi's theory," adds David Ritz Finkelstein at the
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. "This must be more than
coincidence and he really is touching on something profound."
The new theory reported
today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled
"An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" by Lisi, who completed
his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of
California, San Diego.
He has high hopes that his
new theory could provide what he says is a "radical new explanation"
for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of
the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the
strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the
weak force, which controls radioactive decay.
The reason for the
excitement is that Lisi's model also takes account of gravity, a force
that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly
fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are
made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has
lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works.
But some are taking a
cooler view. Prof Marcus du Sautoy, of Oxford University and author of
Finding Moonshine, told the Telegraph: "The proposal in this paper
looks a long shot and there seem to be a lot things still to fill in."
And a colleague Eric
Weinstein in America added: "Lisi seems like a hell of a guy. I'd love
to meet him. But my friend Lee Smolin is betting on a very very long
shot."
Lisi's inspiration lies in
the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 -
a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first
found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year
after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area
the size of Manhattan.
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."
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.
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."
Copyright: Telegraph
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Re: Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
by danwinter on Monday, March 24, 2008 (CDT)
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.goldenmean.info | see golden mean physics-
updates from -lisi's E8 theory of everything
with prof El Naschie and Dan Winter
http://www.goldenmean.info/caughtinthematrix
(E8 animations
http://www.goldenmean.info/fractalscience
letters with mathematician..
and newly:
http://www.goldenmean.info/goldenphysicsvindicated
Deeply vindicating Dan Winter's lifetime of work on Golden Mean ratio in physics - with the powerful mathematics of high energy physics - Professor El Naschie, mentioned for Nobel nomination along with related Garrett Lisi's new E8 theory of everything ,- in his newest paper (below) announces: "..the success of E-infinity theory lies in using a golden mean based number system [9]. However this is only part of the story. The second part lies in the well known fact that the most important of the Platonic solids are golden mean proportioned. ( here you need a star mother kit) Consequently their Coxeter polytopes generalization involves the golden mean in a nontrivial manner. Finally it is the generalization of the Coxeter groups which link us with the exceptional Lie symmetry groups and consequently high energy physics. The synthesis so produced culminated in the recent development of what may be termed quantum golden field theory." |
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