Is E8 Lattice the True Nature of Reality? Or Theory of Everything?
Physicist and surfer Garrett Lisi present a controversial new model of the universe that just maybe answers all the big questions. If nothing else, it’s the most beautiful 8-dimensional model of elementary particles and forces you’ve ever seen.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference and was featured by our editors on the home page. Garrett Lisi – TED2008
If you were to take a coffee cup, and break it in half, then in half again, and keep carrying on, where would you end up? Could you keep on going forever? Or would you eventually find a set of indivisible building blocks out of which everything is made? Jonathan Butterworth explains the Standard Model theory and how it helps us understand the world we live in. Directed by Nick Hilditch, narrated by Addison Anderson. → Click here
E8 mathematics
In mathematics, E8 is any of several closely related exceptional simple Lie groups, linear algebraic groups or Lie algebras of dimension 248; the same notation is used for the corresponding root lattice, which has rank 8. The designation E8 comes from the Cartan–Killing classification of the complex simple Lie algebras, which fall into four infinite series labeled An, Bn, Cn, Dn, and five exceptional cases labeled E6, E7, E8, F4, and G2. The E8 algebra is the largest and most complicated of these exceptional cases.
An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything
“An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything” is a physics preprint proposing a basis for a unified field theory, often referred to as “E8 Theory”, which attempts to describe all known fundamental interactions in physics and to stand as a possible theory of everything. The paper was posted to the physics arXiv by Antony Garrett Lisi on November 6, 2007, and was not submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The title is a pun on the algebra used, the Lie algebra of the largest “simple”, “exceptional” Lie group, E8. The goal is to describe how the combined structure and dynamics of all gravitational and Standard Model particle fields, including fermions, are part of the E8 Lie algebra.
The theory is presented as an extension of the grand unified theory program, incorporating gravity and fermions. In the paper, Lisi states that all three generations of fermions do not directly embed in E8 with correct quantum numbers and spins, but that they must be described via a triality transformation, noting that the theory is incomplete and that a correct description of the relationship between triality and generations, if it exists, awaits a better understanding.
The theory received a flurry of media coverage, but also met with widespread skepticism.
Brian Cox talks about his work on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Discussing the biggest of big science in an engaging, accessible way, Cox brings us along on a tour of the massive project. This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page. → Click here
Legendary scientist David Deutsch puts theoretical physics on the back burner to discuss a more urgent matter: the survival of our species. The first step toward solving global warming, he says, is to admit that we have a problem.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference and was featured by our editors on the home page. → Click here
Legendary scientist David Deutsch puts theoretical physics on the back burner to discuss a more urgent matter: the survival of our species. The first step toward solving global warming, he says, is to admit that we have a problem.
The books of God the King of Kings and the Lord of Lord commands us everyday, but we do not heed what they tell us and we turn our backs on them.