
Surfer’s ‘everything theory’ wipes out - troystribling
http://futurity.org/science-technology/surfers-everything-theory-wipes-out/
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hristov
Well I am glad they listed a helpful analogy with a room and a bunch of chairs
that cleared everything up for me.

~~~
queensnake
As opposed to giving you a graduate education in math & physics and many years
of research besides?

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hristov
The problem with putting jokes on HN is that you always have to explain the
damn joke afterwards.

So yes I think good analogies can be helpful, but this particular analogy made
no sense whatsoever. I mean what does it mean that one has to put two chairs
on top of each other? And why does that make the theory invalid. Theories do
not have to look nice or symmetrical to be valid. In any event the analogy is
completely baffling.

If you cannot come up with an analogy that actually makes sense you may as
well resort to authority and just say this was published in a peer reviewed
journal so until someone refutes it, it is probably right.

~~~
wdewind
It made sense to me (although correct me if im wrong because i dont know
anything about real math or e8): the room is a collection of furniture, the e8
is a collection of theories. if you rearrange all the furniture, it's still a
room full of furniture, but now all the smaller pieces' intended purpose
(sitting on them, putting books in them etc) no longer work. he still keeps e8
intact holistically, but he manages to do so only by invalidating the sub
theories which make up the e8.

close?

~~~
yummyfajitas
Based on my reading of the first few pages of the paper (available here
<http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.2658> ), your description appears roughly correct.

E8 is a lie group, which is a set of matrices which is closed under inversion
and multiplication. In fact, E8 is a very large group.

Particle physics is based on a set of smaller groups, but these groups are
distinct. A "theory of everything" would embed these smaller groups into a
single large group. Lisi showed that you can embed these smaller groups into
E8, although he didn't show that all the important properties hold.

Garibaldi showed that there are only 6 ways of doing this embedding which
don't create higher spin particles. He then showed that none of these 6 ways
preserve chirality (the right-handedness of the universe).

So basically, while the relevant groups can be embedded into E8, they don't
preserve the physics necessary for a theory of everything.

~~~
hristov
Good job figuring out the paper, but if you had to read the paper, that just
proves my initial point that the analogy failed.

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Snark7
That's nothing, I understand that a paragliding philosopher has proven that
both the original theory and the refutation are immaterial contributions to
knowledge under his own theory of scientific progress, to be published soon.

~~~
stcredzero
Which would have all come to naught if a particle physicist stunt driver crack
shot brain surgeon rockstar hadn't saved the world from alien annihilation in
the early 80's.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gNJ1z-ulB4>

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nanofiggis
Garrett Lisi: "Dear Skip, you're now the guy who "proved E8 Theory can't
work." Good luck. In physics, the universe gets the last laugh."

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kiba
I think I felt an optical illusion in the E8-inspired graph.

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cubicle67
Wasn't this from about a year ago?

~~~
troystribling
The original E8 theory of everything paper by Garret Lisi was written around 2
years ago. The paper mentioned in this article, published about a month ago,
claims to prove that a theory of everything cannot be based on E8
[http://www.springerlink.com/content/h3h4wh813606ggq8/?p=6d2b...](http://www.springerlink.com/content/h3h4wh813606ggq8/?p=6d2b3d700fc647d886e66eb40c3ade4e&pi=3)

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BigZaphod
Bummer, dude. Totally.

