Can E8 symmetry explain the Universe?

Damn clever.  A popular article and the preprint.

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything – Telegraph

Lisi’s breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8’s structure matched his own. “My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing,” he tells New Scientist. “I thought: ‘Holy crap, that’s it!’” What Lisi had realised was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8’s 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity

[0711.0770] An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything
Authors: A. Garrett Lisi
(Submitted on 6 Nov 2007)

Abstract: 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.

Anatomy of the Blogosphere

Who is Blogging and Why? Is the Blogosphere in a Digestion Phase?

Somehow it seemed that blogging just isn’t that hot anymore. The feeling has been exacerbated by the latest slow down in news. My feeds just do not update that often these days. Can it be that the digestion phase applies to blogs just as it applies to startups? In this post we’ll investigate whether the blogosphere is going through a digestion phase.

Email Aliases for your Gmail account

Well, sort of.  You can use these alias names to authenticate with Gmail, but not as synonymous addresses.  But it could be an indication of things to come (TM).

Alternate Google Usernames

If you have a very long or a difficult-to-write Google username, there’s a way to create up to four new usernames that could be used to login to your Google account. Just go to the settings page for Picasa Web Albums and add new usernames in the Gallery URL section. The purpose of this feature is to protect your privacy: the URLs of your albums don’t have to include your Gmail username.