Man, I've shredded plenty of sweet pow in my day, and all I ever came up with was a Unified Theory of Rad (it got rejected by the Institute for Advanced Study). But physicist-surfer-snowboarder-Burning-Man-attendee Garrett Lisi has constructed a compelling "theory of everything" based on analyzing an elegant, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern known as E8. Even Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is smitten, describing Lisi's work as both "fabulous" and "one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years."
Hmmph. Lee Smolin never called me fabulous.
When not doing independent physics research, Lisi is often either surfing in Hawaii or shreddin' the gnar in Tahoe as a snowboarding instructor. He abandoned academia because of a distaste for string theory, and when talking about his work, he sounds like a cross between Kane from "Kung Fu" and the Jeff Spicoli...of physics.
"I've never been much of a follower, so I walked off to search for my own theory," he says. Last year, he won a research grant from the charitably funded Foundational Questions Institute to pursue his ideas.
He had been tinkering with "weird" equations for years and getting nowhere, but six months ago he stumbled on a research paper analysing E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points. He noticed that some of the equations describing its structure matched his own. "The moment this happened my brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," says Lisi. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"
Whoaaaaah. Thus far, all of the interactions predicted by the geometrical relationships inside E8 correspond with observations of particles and forces in the real world, but Lisi's theories still have to undergo rigorous testing. Still, here's hoping it'll provide a welcome complement to Brian Greene's string theory horn-blowing. Besides, I hear Greene's a shite windsurfer.
Is mathematical pattern a theory of everything? (NewScientist, subscription required)
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