Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

Deepak

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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).


The E8 pattern (click to enlarge), Garrett Lisi surfing (middle) and out of the water (right)​

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.

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His paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0711.0770

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Can someone make out anything out of that paper? It is too much for me...:devilish:
 
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This looks like HyperTiling.

I think Kai Krause preempted this guy years ago! :D
 
I think he means this dude:

ghostdetailshots.jpeg
 
I think maybe KILER met a hot surfer dude one summer who broke his heart. Damn those summer crushes!
 
The reason why I think he might be into something here, is just how "simple" the thing is.

No need to invent gazillion things we don't know exists to explain the things we know exist.
 
General rule of thumb, don't believe the media when it comes to physics. They sensationalize and distort everything, and its highly annoying.

Right now its not really a theory perse, its more of an outline of a model and there are deep theoretical problems even with that. Its very far from a full fledged model the likes of which you might see on hep/ph for instance.

E8 has been used in model building now for over 30 years though for instance, but the way Mr Lisi uses it is highly nonstandard and a little fishy to be honest.
 
The reason why I think he might be into something here, is just how "simple" the thing is.
I think on slashdot it was pointed out that "exceptionally simple" was a pun as E8 (apparently) is an "exceptional" and "simple" Lie group. I never studied Lie groups at Uni so I don't know anything about them.
 
So, what do this theory bring of predictions regarding new particles? I see it is supposed to predict some, tho dont understand the physics on that level of complexion to understand his paper.
 
There seems to be some dispute about how much of this theory is workable.

With the caveat that I know nothing about the math involved or the physics, some of the responses seem to be that with a symmetry as complex as the one chosen, it isn't too hard to cook up an internally consistent framework with a minor flaw in that it fails to match reality.

On top of that, it seems some of the symmetries he chose to map to known particles fail to obey known constraints and involve mathematical assumptions and operations that appear pretty shaky.
 
General rule of thumb, don't believe the media when it comes to physics. They sensationalize and distort everything, and its highly annoying.

This guy being a) a surfer dude, and b) not employed in academia will no doubt add to the appeal. The icing on the cake will be when his model doesn't gain any traction, eg. if it's wrong -- that'll be the establishment shunning the upstart outsider with the radical ideas that'd upset the established way of thinking. Makes for great TV.
 
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