Bodacious New View of the Universe

July 8th, 2008 | Writings

An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

If only the universe truly resembled this form. Garrett Lisi is a physicist that has been relatively off the well-worn circuit of hyper powered scientific cocktail party squad. His media image has been cast as a modern day surfing Einstein, working in relative obscurity while possibly positing a theory that could change our scientific understanding of the universe. Unification Theory sounds good to me, and as a visual person, I preemptively judge all things on their relation to how they “should” look, from a bottle of wine whose label I cannot bring myself to swallow, to the very fundamental, yet theoretical forms of the possible structure of our universe itself.

The ideas of string theory are very complicated, incredibly so, and I would argue as a whole-hearted, sophomoric layman, that this in and of itself is its ultimate downfall. It seems that over time the strongest theorems are the ones that can be reduced to elegant simplicity despite the intrinsic complexity that they hold. This combined with the inherit reflective qualities of our world; natural forms repeat themselves over and over, and it is in this confirmation of structure and existence that we can determine the very building blocks of it all. Thus, I put my faith in a man from the western shores, who in a double plus to me, surfs a lot.

“Since E8 is perhaps the most beautiful structure in mathematics, it is very satisfying that nature appears to have chosen this geometry.”

Garrett Lisi Interview with WIRED

Stills from Lisi’s TED 2008 Talk (Amazing Graphics)

Telegraph UK article on Lisi

Cornell University Homepage for Lisi

Deferential Geometry (Lissi’s Wiki)