E8 pattern – Surfer dude A. Garret Lisi claims ”An Exceptionally Simple Theory Of Everything” purportedly solves the mysteries of the universe, but it’s really hogwash.

E8 Pattern

While it is kind of cool to think that a part-time mathemetician and hip surfer dude could outdo Einstein, the actual E8 pattern paper is mostly conjecture, cobbling together “notions” of what Lisi thinks should be accepted as supporting theoretical principles without really providing a true theoretical framework for evaluating his “Theory Of Everything.”

First off, the 30-page paper describing how the E8 pattern theory is basically physics gibberish. It’s the functional equivalent of a first-grader’s drawing of a house being equated with an architect’s blueprint.

Second, the paper has already been downgraded from the theoretical physics category (High Energy Physics Theory or “hep-th”) to the general physics category (“gen-ph” aka crackpot theories).

Garret Lisi Theory Of Everything

The abstract (summary) of An Exceptional Theory Of Everything by Garrett Lisi:

All fields of the standard model and gravity are unified as an E8 principal bundle connection. A non-compact real form of the E8 Lie algebra has G2 and F4 subalgebras which break down to strong su(3), electroweak su(2) x u(1), gravitational so(3,1), the frame-Higgs, and three generations of fermions related by triality. The interactions and dynamics of these 1-form and Grassmann valued parts of an E8 superconnection are described by the curvature and action over a four dimensional base manifold.

Much as I’d love to believe that a 248-dimensional model ”totally like dude!” explains the underlying nature of the universe, the theoretical work expressed in the E8 Pattern here is “Etch-A-Sketch” physics. 

Here’s what another physicist said about the E8 pattern and Garrett Lisi’s “An Exceptional Theory Of Everything”:

Needless to say, the visually intriguing and colorful paper is a huge joke. The first place where I exploded in laughter was the equation (1.1).

It says, using words, the following:

My connection of everything = connection for gravity + weak force + strong force + electromagnetism + electron + neutrino + up-quark + down-quark + other-generations

That’s pretty cute! :-) The author is not constrained by any old “conventions” and simply adds Grassmann fields together with ordinary numbers i.e. bosons with fermions, one-forms with spinors and scalars.

He is just so skillful that he can add up not only apples and oranges but also fields of all kinds you could ever think of. Every high school senior excited about physics should be able to see that the paper is just pure junk. I understood these things when I was 14.

If you want groove out on the whole “An Exceptionally Simple Theory Of Everything” idea anyway because it’s just so cosmic, forget the nonsense equations and just watch the E8 movie.  

And that’s all you need to know about the Simple Theory Of Everything hogwash, aka the E8 pattern.

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