Garrett Lisi, Translated

Ok, first let's stop a minute. If you've been following my blog you've just heard Garrett Lisi lay down a pretty interesting theory. As best as we can tell, his theory is incorrect: there are mathematical problems with it. But first, you have to understand it.

What's confusing is the concept that all possibilities exist - the so called many worlds hypothesis - at a really small level there are several things that can happen and the best way to deal with them is to think of them happening kind of at the same time. He opens up with a discussion about coral, which is really all aobut branching out into all different directions at the same time - and still being essentially one thing. But the killer part of it comes when he talks about Schroedinger's cat - he goes into detail (without looking anyone in the eye) explaining that the things that happen inside a closed box are things that we don't know about. Makes sense, right? And then, what he's trying to say is ... ok, so we don't know what's going on - but we can predict it's one of two things.

That power to predict is useful. Say your girlfriend is fucking someone else , and you're not sure who it is. It really does help if you knew that it was only one of eight people - than it does to guess if it were one of twenty six thousand. You could then think about the field, and narrow it - you could focus on what she's saying and what happens when she gets that faraway look in her eye - you could discuss other topics that might relate to any one of the other eight guys and start mentally ruling out which ones she's not interested in, until you finally get to the one that's secretly fucking her. And then you can kill him. But first make him talk. You don't want to make mistakes at this level.

Lisi, on the other hand. Has made a mistake. It basically amounts to how he sees the shape. He's projecting some of this shape down so he can look at the other points in it - and guess what - part of his projection excluded something. Woops. So although we see a cool shape on the screen, the truth is that he's actually projecting part of what isn't there. He's tried to correct his mistake with a new paper he released last month that predicts the Higgs boson (the big particle we're all looking for out of the CERN collider ) is going to be really interesting - we'll get quite a few varieties of them. Setting aside the math, is a tricky proposition. We're going to try to visualize it rather than collapse the imaginary and real parts of something into an argument about how ridiculous the theory (basically, what someone from Texas did a while back when they blew the theory apart - hopefully it's been fixed by now with the new work).

But if we hold that thought for a moment. And if we finally catch Garrett's eye - we can see he's seeing something pretty useful. Because what he's really seeing is the fabric of reality itself resting, like a surfer on a wave. And that surfer is this shape - this geometry called E8. Let's take the case of an electron.

Ok, time to think a bit. Take a look at this period, at the end of this sentence. (see it? it's to the left of this thing in the parens). Ok, that period is a dot. But it can also be a straight line, coming right at us. One of two things. Because every dot in two dimensional space can have one line drawn straight through it as long as that line goes straight into our eye.

Ok. So now let's think about the electron, and coral. An electron, as Garrett said, is a point from this line that intersects spacetime. Picture from far away a surfer riding a wave - and you can see the long line of the wave, and then perhaps - this point riding it - sometimes disappearing in a barrel, sometimes moving up and around on the wave, doing cutbacks.

Ok, so this point on the wave the E8 superconnection is described by the curvature and action over a four dimensional base manifold - that is, we see this strange particle blowing through copper wire - hitting a transister embedded in an active matrix, glowing red, green or blue and then making this tiny black dot on your flatscreen monitor. The idea is that the core of reality is contained inside this kind of surfing... and let's stop for a minute and think about surfing - as a movement.

What we're thinking about here is this great big, complex ball - that has these new dimensions in it - and it's rolling through space time. That's what we see in the electron - kind of like a dot, but it's really a line out of this big, complex ball. This sort of network of lines and arcs rolling through a wave of spacetime and where they intersect, like a full line through a page - you get this point particle. But we're always thinking about motion in terms of things like balls rolling across smooth floors.

If you think about the motion in this case, of surfing - you're moving forward. And at the same time, you are moving sideways. That's important.

Because you are moving through time and space. And if we explore the dimensions as the are discussed here.... first 1, then maybe 1 again (talking about the line through the page) , and 2, then 3, where it's a block but it doesn't exist in time, then 5 - where we have space and time but we're still moving as we experience it - that is our next level of understanding. The ability to see that we are moving through time, and also moving through something else. Like a spirit.

I'm drawing my numbers from a mathematical sequence known as the fibonacci sequence because I believe that understanding life is important to understanding the transformation of energy at this level. The schrodinger's cat is not alive or dead. It's traveling in two directions at the same time. They're not in opposite directions. They're moving at right angles to each other. Like a surfer on a wave, moving forward, and to the side.

Like you.

Garrett tries to explain the existence of an electron as this kind of shape that rolls across spacetime and leaves this point of symmetry, from an axis of the shape. How does that help us to understand the electron? It does two things.

First, as you rotate the shape you find out where the symmetrical particles are, in terms of the antimatter. Yes, folks, the universe does have antimatter in it. Touch the anti-you and you explode.

You also find gaps where, if you fill in all the particles we have found. You find holes where other particles should exist if the theory is true. So that's when you can kick back - listen for what's happening out of the big CERN collider in this year and the next - and try to figure out for yourself if this all makes sense. What Garrett is saying, is that the Higgs Boson (sometimes called the 'God' particle) belongs to a family of particles.

What's cool about being a Christian is that you get to see it's still this shape - and this Geometry. It leaves you free as a physicist to find alot of God particles, because, hey - after all - you're not looking for God.

Your girlfriend made you see God last night. And it was pretty much all about one thing. Wasn't it?

But what happens is, that maybe, somewhere down the road - you figured out for yourself that maybe there is this eight dimensional structure to the universe. Life from a finite scale, without boundary or edge - the interplay of you and me. Spiritus Mundi.