A surfer (with a doctorate in theoretical physics) has stumbled — literally — upon the Theory of Everything… maybe:
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!”
You can read the 31-page paper here. If Lisi has stumbled upon the Theory of Everything, it will have a profoud impact on a number of disciplines: physics and philosophy being the first two.