Core Dump

I've posted here before about physicist Garrett Lisi and his unconventional take on the unified field theory. I haven't seen much about it recently, so I was glad to see this article in yesterday's Toronto Star. The article includes comments from Lee Smolin of Waterloo's Perimiter Institute. The article's web page also includes the full text of the interview with Lisi on which much of the article was based.

The Star this week caught up with Lisi, now 42. And like everything else in his life, the exchange happened on his terms – by email.

The most important update: Lisi writes from Maui that his confidence "has increased" since November 2007, when he posted his theory on arXiv, a database on the Web that accepts scientific papers before they are peer reviewed.

"In fact, I can now make an unusually strong statement: If one believes in the unification of electromagnetic, weak and strong forces, which there's good evidence for, then the unification with gravity and Higgs particles is inevitable. When one continues this unification by including matter (electrons, quarks, neutrinos), this whole structure fits in E8. Mathematically, this is irrefutable."

Labels: science