E8 Theory That Unifies Quantum with Relativity... Maybe

Started by SGOS, September 10, 2019, 02:13:45 PM

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SGOS

I bumbled onto this that talks about something call E8, a possible sought after unifying theory.  I can't vouch for any of it, and in a couple of places, it lost me, but I was able to stay with it better than I can trying to follow string theory.  All that aside, I found it interesting enough to think it may be worth posting.  It starts out presenting some of those hard to wrap your head around ideas that we we are all familiar with from those college sophomore bull sessions after midnight while drinking.  Then it gets into E8, and takes on a more serious tone, and explains what we might understand so far about E8 and it's relationship to reality.  Mostly I found it fun to think about it.  I have no idea if it's well known in physics or if someone is just presenting a brain teaser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRmZ_sNf2mE

Unbeliever

Well, it's not new, but it is interesting. I don't know what the current status of this is, but I hope someone's still thinking about it.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Baruch

A material view of a being, implies that as part of the universe, we individually and collectively have always been "in the pool".  So far so good.  Then it gets fishy ...

A fish per se can't see beyond the water.  The analogy of the girl in the pool, she is meta, breaking the 4th wall, head out of the water, talking to another version of herself not in the pool.

I may look at all of this clip later, but since it is getting all wet, in philosophy, probably not.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

drunkenshoe

Quote from: Baruch on September 10, 2019, 04:56:32 PM
A material view of a being, implies that as part of the universe, we individually and collectively have always been "in the pool".  So far so good.  Then it gets fishy ...

A fish per se can't see beyond the water.  The analogy of the girl in the pool, she is meta, breaking the 4th wall, head out of the water, talking to another version of herself not in the pool.

Please stop!
"science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. ıt is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - tp

Baruch

Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

drunkenshoe

"science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. ıt is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - tp

Baruch

Quote from: drunkenshoe on September 10, 2019, 05:08:14 PM
Come on, man.

If you have ancestors from Ankyra, then you probably have Galatian heritage (and Hittite).  That Gaul component explains why you have so much gall ;-)
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

drunkenshoe

#7
Quote from: Baruch on September 10, 2019, 05:11:05 PM
If you have ancestors from Ankyra, then you probably have Galatian heritage (and Hittite).  That Gaul component explains why you have so much gall ;-)

Fuck my heritage, Baruch. Breathe. Please.
"science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. ıt is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - tp

Unbeliever

Quote from: Baruch on September 10, 2019, 05:11:05 PM
If you have ancestors from Ankyra, then you probably have Galatian heritage (and Hittite).  That Gaul component explains why you have so much gall ;-)

So what does any of that have to do with the opening post, or the subject under discussion? Can you engage in a conversation without derailing it?

God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Baruch

Quote from: drunkenshoe on September 10, 2019, 05:18:54 PM
Fuck my heritage, Baruch. Breathe. Please.

Typical SJW ... cutting of the tree your branch is connected to.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Baruch

Quote from: Unbeliever on September 10, 2019, 05:20:56 PM
So what does any of that have to do with the opening post, or the subject under discussion? Can you engage in a conversation without derailing it?

Defend drunkenshoe if you want, she was being cryptic.  But I don't put anyone on ignore.

I have commented for now.  Be happy with that.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Unbeliever

God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Unbeliever



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR88KR4sg-w



QuoteE8 Lie group and E8 Lattice has sometimes been called the most beautiful mathematical structure in the world. Is it the theory of everything or the true nature of reality? It even has an entire research company behind it called "Quantum Gravity Research"

It is a 248 dimensional object, but it can also be thought of as an object that has 8 spatial dimensions, with 248 symmetries.

Why is this structure important? Well, it happens to show up in parts of String Theory. But also in 2007, a theoretical physicist Antony Garrett Lisi published a paper proclaiming that the mathematics of this structure contained all the particles and forces in the universe.  He called it the “the exceptionally simple theory of everything” What Lisi did is he found a relationship between this object and all the forces and particles we know about. 

According to the standard model, there are 4 fundamental forces in nature, strong force, weak force, electromagnetism and gravity.  And there are 12 fundamental particles.  In addition, each of these particles has a antiparticle of itself.  In total, these make up all the elementary particles, and there are exactly 28 of them. 24 elementary particles, and 4 force carrier particles. Each of these distinct elementary particles has eight quantum numbers assigned to it, based on the charges each particle has.
This brings the number of distinct particles to 224. 

Lisi found that he could mathematically equate all of these particles to one of the points in the E8 model.
But the model has 248 points, not 224.  So what about the empty 24 extra points?  He simply created 24 new theoretical particles.

Notice how the lines radiate from each point: Lisi also found patterns emerging between particles and forces like they happen in actual reality â€" for example, when photons interact with leptons, they create electrons.  The same thing happens in the E8 lattice.  The connections shown within points on the E8 match up to real, known connections between particles in our physical world.

One of the particles he assigned to this shape behaves very much like the force carrier for gravity â€" a graviton.  And this is the key to Lisi claiming that this could be the “theory of everything.” â€" because it combines matter particles and gravity in one framework.

So Basically, all the normal things we know about can be described in terms of algebraic objects, and each of these objects happens to sit inside this complicated E8 structure.

Lisi's theory does have some problems. One of the biggest problems with the theory is that Lisi combines the force carrying particles, Bosons with the matter particles.  String theory does this too, but with the rigorous mathematics to go with it.  This math is not present in E8, so Lisi combining these appears to be arbitrary. 

In addition, a leading mathematician and expert on Lie groups, Skip Garibaldi wrote a paper in 2010 which mathematically disproved Lisi.  But Lisi came back with counter arguments to that. 

But the elephant in the room is the 24 new theoretical particles that come out of this theory.  So it requires the existence of undiscovered matter.  However, since the startup of the Large Hardon Collider, it is possible one of lisi’s 24 new theoretical particles could be found. Lisi himself says, "I'm the first to admit that it's a long shot." 

In fact, I think that even if one of the new theoretical particles is found, it would be a huge breakthrough towards proving this theory is on the right track. 

How does this compare to string theory?  At least there is a way to prove it, unlike string theory â€" where we don’t really have a way to prove it.

And although E8 has a vast number of dimensions, the physical universe described by the theory would have only the four dimensions we are familiar with and not the 10 or 11 of string theory.

You may have heard of a research organization called Quantum Gravity Research.  This group has built a whole company around the idea of E8 being the theory of everything.  They have some really well produced and slick videos on you tube that you can check out for yourself.  They are like mini movies with actors, special effects, and animations.  So I commend them for making this science approachable to everyday people.

The problem with their videos is they are mixing actual proven concepts in physics with a lot of unproven concepts, including new age mysticism.  This really diminishes their credibility in my view because the viewer doesn’t know which part is true and which part is conjecture. 

E8 is a real mathematical structure.  It has been around for a long time.  Quantum Gravity Research people did not come up with it. 

And I think it’s an interesting idea.  All that needs to be done, is for the large hadron collider to find at least one of 24 theoretical particles, and this theory may get hoards of scientists singing its praises.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

PopeyesPappy

Save a life. Adopt a Greyhound.

SGOS

Quote from: PopeyesPappy on September 10, 2019, 09:13:52 PM
Jacques Distler and Skip Garibaldi say, "There is no "Theory of Everything" inside E8."
I appreciate that.  Science is based on brisk debate, challenge, and change.  I was in elementary school when my geography teacher mentioned plate tectonics.  She introduced it as a given, which I could accept quite easily because rocks and continents on such a big scale act like smaller softer mixtures of water and solids. 

Consider that all the water and all the continents are bent to fit the curvature of the Earth.  This may be wrong, nor did my teacher present it that way.  It's something I visualized on my own.  Her weakest justification for the theory I thought might have been here explanation that North and South America sort of fit together with the coast lines of Europe and Africa.  I thought that was highly interesting, even if it was a highly interesting coincidence.  Turns out that's exactly how it happened and the actual drift and it's speed has been measured.

But the strange part of all this that was unknown to me at the time, was that tectonic theory was under going contentious debate and had been for a long time, often regarded by other scientists a foolish conjecture.  And stranger still was that I recently read that tectonics was not universally accepted until the 1970s, at least according the source I read.  That was a few years after I finished college, and here I had been believing tectonics was real, when science wasn't even agreeing about it.  There was a hot scientific debate that I lived through, and wasn't I wasn't even aware of the chaos that was actually taking place.  Many of these sorts of lengthy debates happen in science, and much of it doesn't even involve religions until they begin to realize there toes are being stepped on.  And then we have to go through all the shit over again until the Pope makes a statement that the new knowledge actually shows the mysterious wonder of God's love.

There's a lot of figuring out that science has to do.  It was much easier when the answers were provided by stargazing goat herders spending long nights in the dark, with only the help of dim light from newly discovered fire.