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A New Theory of Everything?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the it's-all-made-of-stars dept.

goatherder writes "The Telegraph is running a story about a new Unified Theory of Physics. Garrett Lisi has presented a paper called "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" which unifies the Standard Model with gravity — without using string theory. The trick was to use E8 geometry which you may remember from an earlier Slashdot article. Lisi's theory predicts 20 new particles which he hopes might turn up in the Large Hadron Collider."

5 of 511 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Exceptionally simple? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful
    He'd say Great, cause if we can detect those particles, now knowing what to look for, this theory will start to be validated.

  2. Re:I have a horrible feeling... by Admiral+Ag · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Haha. You aren't the only one. The first thing I thought of was this classic Arthur C. Clarke short story: The 9 Billion Names of God.

    http://lucis.net/stuff/clarke/9billion_clarke.html

    --
    "by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
  3. Re:Lubos Motl by OzRoy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wouldn't dismiss it yet. This is only one person.

    Would you completely dismiss some new IT products because Steve Balmer speaks out calling it garbage? Probably not.

    If lots of other people also spoke out calling it garbage then you might start paying attention. Now I don't know if this guy is the Steve Balmer of the physics community or not, but I know nothing about him so why should I trust his word over some other guy I know nothing about either?

  4. Re:I don't understand a thing :( by BlackSabbath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wow. I really, really hope that you are in education.

    I have Bachelor degree in Physics (over 20 years ago) and I had no idea what the hell was being talked about. Your explanation is BRILLIANT. It does not assume readers are morons, does not portray science as magic, explains the subject in a way that even a layman finishes reading it with a better understanding than they started, and even manages to infuse some feeling for what the scientific discovery process is like. Amazing.

    As someone who originally got into science because of Carl Sagan's Cosmos I can honestly say that if I had lecturers like you I would still be doing science. (not surprisingly, the subjects that I did best in had lecturers cut from the same cloth).

    Thank you.

  5. Re:Exceptionally simple? by ColaMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Adding 20 new, unobserved, unproven particles makes for an "exceptionally simple" theory? Wonder what Occam would say about that.

    I dunno, but the guy(s) who worked out the periodic table would likely approve:

    (Dmitri taps his newly formed periodic table)

    "Hmmm. Looks like some element should fit here."

    (20 years later)

    "Hey look! We've just discovered germanium, and it fits *right there*"

    --

    You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
    There is a lot of hype here.