A New Theory of Everything?

[astro]

Freedom of Science writes:

http://globalpioneering.com/wp02/an-exceptionally-simple-theory-of-everything/


Garrett Lisi writes a paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770)and as a shrewd Doctor of Philosophy playing for the media he titles it



An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything.



This is not a tongue in cheek parody of physics, it is scientific fraud.


Doctor Lisi is lying about the content of his paper in the title to get media attention to further his career. This paper is shameless prostitution of science to the media.




Lubos Motl writes,


An exceptionally simple theory of everything (http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/exceptionally-simple-theory-of.html)




The most entertaining paper that managed to creep into hep-th today is calledAn exceptionally simple theory of everything (http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.0770).Update: the paper was re-classified from hep-th to gen-ph, general physics. Thanks God.


Its author, A. Garrett Lisi (http://usparc.ihep.su/spires/find/hep/www?rawcmd=a+Garrett+Lisi,+A), claims to have found nothing less than a theory of everything. An exceptionally simple one. It may sound as a bold statement but from a genius of A. Garrett Lisi's caliber, it shouldn't be surprising. :-) Because the work is based on the E8 group that I love, you bet that I have opened the paper.

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-generationsThat's pretty cute! :-) The author is not constrained by any old "conventions" and simply adds Grassmann fields together with ordinary numbers, one-forms with 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.


Concerning the title, I present it as a joke but I agree with Freedom of Science (http://globalpioneering.com/wp02/an-exceptionally-simple-theory-of-everything/) that if the title is viewed seriously by some important readers and if the author allows it, it is a case of scientific fraud.

There is not a glimpse of physics in that paper. You won't find anything like a "Lagrangian", "amplitudes", "masses", "cross section", "energy", "force", "Hamiltonian", "entropy", "path integral", "temperature", or other words that you expect in physics paper. When he talks about actions, they're always wrong actions from some previous obscure papers that have clearly nothing to do with observable physics either. On the other hand, you find a lot of random assignments of particles to vertices of polytopes - something that you know from papers about the octopi.


What's the score of this theory on the John Baez crackpot index?

[Farsight]

I don't know, but don't let that sway your opinion. I've just had a skim of that paper, and recognise enough to print it off for a proper read. Whatever its flaws, the guys at the Perimeter Institute are getting very interested in geometry. And it really seems to be offering something. Of course, as the author of A Qualitative 3+1 Dimensional Geometrical Model I would say that.

[Epsilon=One]

I've just had a skim of that paper, and recognise enough to print it off for a proper read. Whatever its flaws, the guys at the Perimeter Institute are getting very interested in geometry. And it really seems to be offering something. Of course, as the author of A Qualitative 3+1 Dimensional Geometrical Model I would say that.Your apparent "gut" feeling, after "a skim," is not to be dismissed.

I am interested in your opinion "of that paper" after further review.

Today's theoretical physicists seem to dismiss, too quickly, the fundamental logic of geometry while worshipping motion and esoteric dimensions . . . before being able to define the origins of time and orthogonality.

[Farsight]

Willco, Epsilon. I'm on a promise to review a book, so I can't do it right now. But for now, my gut feeling is also coloured by having read Lubos Motl being utterly obnoxious previously whilst giving no factual reasons for disapproval. It's also coloured by the recent New Scientist article "Quantum Unentanglement" which featured Joy Christian and others such as Gerard t'Hooft and Lee Smolin talking geometry, and an illustration of non-commutative geometrical rotations. Then when you look at Joy Christian's paper at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0703/0703179v2.pdf you see this:

...It is crucial to note that the ej appearing in the above definition are not the usual self-adjoint operators on a complex Hilbert space, but are the ordinary 3-vectors in the real physical vector space...

...appearing therein is not the unit imaginary i = √−1, but a real geometric entity...

...a volume form...

...a classical relation...

...a local realistic model can be constructed to exactly reproduce quantum mechanical correlations...

...spacelike separated...

...sharper geometrical meaning...

...classical, local realistic framework...

...orthogonal directions in the physical space...

...algebraic properties of the physical space.

[astro]

What does Lisi's theory predict?

Where are the numbers?

What does it unify?

How does it unify gravity and the other forces?

Where are the equations?

I see lots of pretty pictures, in pretty colors, but what are the postulates?

Thanks!