Surfer develops Grand Unified Theory

[CaptainChewbacca]

[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.j ... tviewedbox]Grand Unified Link[/ur]

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 14/11/2007

An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which as received rave reviews from scientists.

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).

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.

Now Lisi, currently in Nevada, has come up with a proposal to do this. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi's work as "fabulous". "It is one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years," he says.

"Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years," Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph.

"Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi's theory," adds David Ritz Finkelstein at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. "This must be more than coincidence and he really is touching on something profound."

The new theory reported today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" by Lisi, who completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of California, San Diego.

He has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a "radical new explanation" for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay.

The reason for the excitement is that Lisi's model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works.

But some are taking a cooler view. Prof Marcus du Sautoy, of Oxford University and author of Finding Moonshine, told the Telegraph: "The proposal in this paper looks a long shot and there seem to be a lot things still to fill in."

And a colleague Eric Weinstein in America added: "Lisi seems like a hell of a guy. I'd love to meet him. But my friend Lee Smolin is betting on a very very long shot."

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!'"

What Lisi had realised was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8's 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity.

Physicists have long puzzled over why elementary particles appear to belong to families, but this arises naturally from the geometry of E8, he says. So far, all the interactions predicted by the complex geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world. "How cool is that?" he says.

The crucial test of Lisi's work will come only when he has made testable predictions. Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up.

"The theory is very young, and still in development," he told the Telegraph. "Right now, I'd assign a low (but not tiny) likelyhood to this prediction.

"For comparison, I think the chances are higher that LHC will see some of these particles than it is that the LHC will see superparticles, extra dimensions, or micro black holes as predicted by string theory. I hope to get more (and different) predictions, with more confidence, out of this E8 Theory over the next year, before the LHC comes online."

Pretty cool that its a theory with testable components. One thing I always hear from scientsts is that the GUT should be 'elegant'. This may certainly qualify.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Ah cripes, I bolloxed the link. A little help?

[Kanastrous]

This is *so* cool.

[Prozac the Robert]

The paper is available here for free. Sadly it's all just slightly beyond me generally, except for the bits that I just don't understand at all.

[CaptainChewbacca]

You know, I wouldn't have expected this guy to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

[Natorgator]

Ah, you beat me to this. I was just about to post it.

Perhaps one of our residents physicists can shed some light on this?

[Galvatron]

Yeah, I don't understand any of this, but something tells me I should be excited about it.

[Gullible Jones]

Can't get anything more than the abstract, and the paper looks seriously over my head anyway. Testable predictions are nice though.

(The Telegraph article gets something wrong though. Loop quantum gravity, Heim theory, and causal dynamic triangulation all attempt to integrate gravity, and while Heim theory is considered somewhat fringey, LQG and CDT, though not popular, are generally considered to be as worthy as string theory.)

Oh one more thing... Crackpots: this is what a theoretical physicist outside the mainstream looks like. Note, please, the humbleness, the lack of paranoid ranting, and the fact that his theory actually makes sense to anyone else.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I love the almost palpable journalists'/commoners' enthusiasm that some "normal guy" (at least twisted that way) shows up the arrogant by-the-book scientists!

I abhor articles like this.

[Turin]

You know, even if the guy turns out to be totally, utterly wrong, it would be a breath of fresh air out of particle physics. You know, actual science involving falsifiability and theories related to experimental evidence, rather than a bunch of really-difficult-but-pie-in-the-sky mathematics combined with vague mumblings of "anthropic principle."

[Nephtys]

I love the almost palpable journalists'/commoners' enthusiasm that some "normal guy" (at least twisted that way) shows up the arrogant by-the-book scientists!

I abhor articles like this.

He's a 'normal guy' with a doctorate apparently. Right.

They should seriously play up that part.

[Kanastrous]

"Commoners?"

[Gullible Jones]

I love the almost palpable journalists'/commoners' enthusiasm that some "normal guy" (at least twisted that way) shows up the arrogant by-the-book scientists!

I abhor articles like this.

Definitely with you on that. At least the article makes to mention that this "surfer dude" happens to be an unaffiliated scientist with a doctorate.

You know, even if the guy turns out to be totally, utterly wrong, it would be a breath of fresh air out of particle physics. You know, actual science involving falsifiability and theories related to experimental evidence, rather than a bunch of really-difficult-but-pie-in-the-sky mathematics combined with vague mumblings of "anthropic principle."

Can't help but agree, although it's not like we don't have any provable/falsifiable theories (see LQG again).

As for vague mumbling about the anthropic principle, said "principle" is a load of vague pseudophilosophical bullshit that is meaningless at best and antiscientific at worst.

[Turin]

You know, even if the guy turns out to be totally, utterly wrong, it would be a breath of fresh air out of particle physics. You know, actual science involving falsifiability and theories related to experimental evidence, rather than a bunch of really-difficult-but-pie-in-the-sky mathematics combined with vague mumblings of "anthropic principle."

Can't help but agree, although it's not like we don't have any provable/falsifiable theories (see LQG again).

Well, sure. I was thinking more about the predominance of string-theory (or M-theory, or whatever they're calling it now). Admittedly that's probably because I'm still working my way through Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong. It's a rather sobering read. Partially because the beginning is pretty dense material for a non-physicist. But also because it's frightening to see how... well, almost religious in character some of the physics community has become around their pet Theory of Everything. They should know better!

[Gullible Jones]

Yeah, I kind of figured there just might be something wrong with M-theory when I heard a physicist interviewed on NPR explaining that "you're out on a limb and you have to have faith". When people start saying that about a scientific theory, it's not a good sign.

It's not like string theory can't be right, but geeze, that's a bit much.

(Note a string or brane theory may still be the best shot at a TOE; LQG apparently still has some problems reproducing the theory of relativity. It would be nice if both that and CDT got a bigger following though, especially CDT. And people ought to put a bit more brainpower into messing around with Heim theory, even if it's probably a red herring.)

[Jaepheth]

Can't get anything more than the abstract, and the paper looks seriously over my head anyway.

In the upper right corner under "Download" there's a link to the PDF

[Darth Servo]

You know, I wouldn't have expected this guy to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

Well, at least its not some stereotypical Jeff Spicoli

[Ford Prefect]

I love the almost palpable journalists'/commoners' enthusiasm that some "normal guy" (at least twisted that way) shows up the arrogant by-the-book scientists!

I abhor articles like this.

The way it was written, it makes it sound like that it was from the Star Trek school of scientific breakthroughs. All inspiration, no actual work. Which is astounding, given that Lisi actually stated to the Telegraph that he still had to work further on his theory.

Maybe they latched on too strongly to the line "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'".

[Stark]

I love the almost palpable journalists'/commoners' enthusiasm that some "normal guy" (at least twisted that way) shows up the arrogant by-the-book scientists!

I abhor articles like this.

Yeah, even though the 'surfer dood' holds a PhD. Wow, just like any beach bum! Overturn that ivory tower!

[Winston Blake]

I love the almost palpable journalists'/commoners' enthusiasm that some "normal guy" (at least twisted that way) shows up the arrogant by-the-book scientists!

I abhor articles like this.

Yeah, even though the 'surfer dood' holds a PhD. Wow, just like any beach bum! Overturn that ivory tower!

It's telling that, despite all the 'whoa dude' respect, at no point do they refer to him as Dr. Lisi. It's sad that they've got a science story here that is actually important on its own merits, and instead they try to jam it into a sellable David vs Goliath template.

Pretty cool that its a theory with testable components. One thing I always hear from scientsts is that the GUT should be 'elegant'. This may certainly qualify.

Nitpick: GUT != ToE. The GUT is everything except gravity, the ToE has gravity too.

[OmegaGuy]

"Surfer develops Grand Unified Theory"

Does it involve the Power Cosmic?



Sorry, I had to.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

You know, I wouldn't have expected this guy to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

Hmph. Feynman was known for visiting strip clubs. Just about most of the Physics Professors I have known have some personality quirk one way or another. Comes as part of the job.

The one person I know might able to tell whether this is bullshit or crap would be Kuroneko but he hasn't been seen around for a while.

And just for no one in the know, it is remarkably hard to find theory jobs, worse if you are doing some fringe stuff like what this guy did as part of his PhD, assuming the CV isn't faked. They are hard to come by, and you have to be remarkably brilliant, and well published by the time you defend your PhD to at least find a job. Otherwise, tough luck. There just aren't enough theory jobs available compared to experimentalists, who can find work in the industry easily because of the skills they acquired.

[K. A. Pital]

A scientist who is apparently poor and has not been able to take a theoretical job can still develop good theories. The anti-intellectualist slant here is pure bullshit. Without proper education, no one can develop any sort of "theory" of that level of sophistication and scale. Morons.

[Adrian Laguna]

A scientist who is apparently poor and has not been able to take a theoretical job can still develop good theories. The anti-intellectualist slant here is pure bullshit. Without proper education, no one can develop any sort of "theory" of that level of sophistication and scale. Morons.

Einstein during his "miracle" 1905 year was working at a patent office. However, he had a Ph.D. same as the guy in the article. In fact they'd hired him because of his doctorate in physics, they figured such a well educated man would be well qualified to properly review the rather fantastical claims that inventors are often given to.

[Dooey Jo]

Yeah, even though the 'surfer dood' holds a PhD. Wow, just like any beach bum! Overturn that ivory tower!

It's telling that, despite all the 'whoa dude' respect, at no point do they refer to him as Dr. Lisi. It's sad that they've got a science story here that is actually important on its own merits, and instead they try to jam it into a sellable David vs Goliath template.

They don't refer to anyone as "Dr." in the article, and Lisi's doctorate in theoretical physics is the only one mentioned.