(no subject)

[elvum]

Any fans out there of theories of everything?

I've never been good enough at HEP theory to do more than skim this stuff, but I particularly liked the end of section 5: "The theory has no free parameters. The coupling constants are unified at high energy, and the cosmological constant and masses arise from the vacuum expectation values of the various Higgs fields..." - the guy is simply reeling off desirable features from the GUT ticklist.

I eagerly await the results of some peer review, and about a decade of LHC running. :-)

Comments

[gaspodog.livejournal.com]

I read about this one in New Scientist - it sounded vaguely interesting (not that I comprehend the symmetries / mathematics involved). Sort of like "I dropped all the numbers into this pretty pattern and most of them kind of fitted, so hey, let's see if it predicts something".

And if it manages to predict something correctly, it'll have one up on string theory...

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

He's not obviously a crank. Though he spends a somewhat surprising amount of space rehearsing basic Lie algebra theory (which, from a quick skim, he gets right - beyond that point, my grasp of the mathematics falters). He includes some serious people in his acknowledgements, but then anyone can do that.

*googles*

OK, John Baez (who is to be taken seriously) thinks there might be something in it. See here from some background. Here's another post about it, suggesting that it may well be right, but probably only by pushing existing problems (unification) somewhere else (where the symmetry-breaking comes from), and not making them much easier in the process. Oh, and this looks like a great explanation of the physics behind it.

Would anyone like me to explain about Lie algebras, root systems, E8 etc?

[gaspodog.livejournal.com]

I have the measure of this Lisi chap. My proposed symmetry is clearly far superior to his... :)

[gaspodog.livejournal.com]

It seems that my theory may be just as good as his after all...

Again, I am no expert, so I bow t those who know more about it, but Ars Technica reckon it's bollocks, and you can see the blog post they are working from as well as a forum thread discussing the paper.

The main guy discrediting it (the blog poster) is a string theorist, but his reasoning seems sound, so I don't think it's just jealousy. His track record as a theorist looks ok though - if his former jobs and body of published work are anything to go by.

Apparently he does like to argue with the Quantum Loop Gravity people, so maybe he just likes to cause a fuss.