American Unitarian Conference Forum

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jh...urf114.xml

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

"...Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.

E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape."

What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8.

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!'"
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> What is interesting...IF the theory holds up...is the beauty contained in it....something one could think hints at the divine.

I took a quick stab on Google re Kabbala and the #248...viola!

http://books.google.com/books?id=waWmETb...-TKHTrZ15M

"The number 248 corresponds to Mercy ... the 248 paths that the 5 judgements are extended are the correlates of those of mercy."

But verse 248 of "The Greater Holy Assembly" states:

"And because She passeth over from brain unto brain through those long hairs, these same (hairs) are not found to be firm. (> our surfer dude?!)

And -http://www.kabbalaonline.org/Safedteachings/gor/Mitzvot_and_Tikun_(42).asp

"It is well known that there are 248 positive mitzvot and 365 negative mitzvot. The negative mitzvot tell us what not to do. Their number corresponds to the 248 limbs of the human body, which is made in the image of the Nefesh. Thus, each one of the negative mitzvot corresponds to one of the limbs of the Nefesh, and transgression of any one of them causes a corresponding blemish or damage in one of the limbs of the Nefesh."
>(The first aspect is the internal Man consisting of his spiritual element of soul - the NaRNaCh ( Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Chaya).

Finally - http://www.greatdreams.com/plum-tree.htm

"In Hebrew gematria Midbar equates to 248, the number which symbolizes Man’s correspondence to the Divine prototype. For example, there are 248 positive commandments in the Torah and 248 parts of the human body. The digits of 248, when multiplied together 2×4×8, equal 64, the number of Elohim’s Eternal Forms. Each of the digits of the number 248 is also a root of 64, since 26 = 43 = 82 = 64.

Some a my readers may recall our earlier discussion of how Abram’s name was changed to Abraham by the addition of the letter Heh ?, thereby increasing its numerical value to 248 . The purpose of this name change was to perfect Abraham’s correspondence to the Divine Man, i.e. to complete the Symmetry between the Upper and the Lower Worlds. This completion is accomplished by the letter Heh, which also signifies the number Five, as in the five levels of inward Symmetry which comprise the Soul. It is in Abraham, therefore, that the five-fold inward Symmetry of the Soul is first realized. Only as a consequence of Abraham’s holiness did the restoration of the Soul to its highest level of integration – the World Soul Pleroma – become attainable.
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Ok..how is that for tying together science and the religion of science?!
That was fun...I am sure this theory will truly excite the Kabbala world as it can be read to tie into their number theories.

Ok..how is that for tying together science and the religion of science?!
That was fun...I am sure this theory will truly excite the Kabbala world as it can be read to tie into their number theories................

Geez, its going to be a long night. Im a student of Kaballah and astronomy.

Neat stuff.

Numbers are or can be exciting things. Sometimes we make the explainations too complicated to be of use to ordinary people.

248 is a wonderful number: to know the duality(2) of creation and created things(4) to be used with knowledge(8). These are a gift of the 5th element, Spirit (5).

All I know is that it is pretty http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co..._graph.svg

I would like to see it in 3-D.  If you stare at this "Mandella" you are drawn into the colorful tunnel toward the center....I see the light!

The inherent math found in nature is a source of both mystery and beauty....it brings to mind the Platonic realm -

http://linas.org/theory/platonic.html

"The failure of the Reality Club's assertion that 'mathematics is an invention of the human brain, that mathematics is no more than a predisposition in our neural pathways to add and subtract numbers' is not so much that the statements about the brain are false, as it is rather due to the lack of appreciation for the physical basis underlying mind-body duality. In the modern, atheistic world, it may seem convincing to sweep away the belief of God into some neural predisposition, some curiosity of the biochemistry of the brain that makes the combination of wine, dance, meditation and chant lead to trances and epiphanies: just curious psychological phenomena to be studied. Yet it completely misses the point: studies of structure only reveal structure. Of course, if you look for a neural pathway for this or that, you will find it. What were you thinking, that such a pathway wouldn't be there? Finding the mechanisms or pathways of mathematical thought neither supports, nor denies the objective existence of platonic reality. The objective existence of subjective states may be viewed in PET tomographies of brains. But a PET scan neither proves or disproves the existence of the noosphere, any more than the discovery and description of a biochemical pathway does."

"This is not to say that objectivism doesn't carry the seeds of its own destruction, for indeed, it does. Some day, maybe someday soon, some neurologist, possibly working in a vein similar to Stuart Hameroff, will uncover the link between the quantum world and the biochemical process of thinking. Some day, possibly during work with quantum computers, an inkling of the connection between quantum state reduction and free-will will be discovered. That day, we will have to reconsider fundamentally what it means for time to pass by, and we will have to reconsider what is meant by objective reality. The ability of the human mind to mold objective reality will no longer be a truism known to school-children, but will have empirical basis in scientific fact. Just because the subjective world is locked up in our brains doesn't mean it doesn't exist, no more than an unbreakable ciphertext (a mere string of random numbers?) doesn't mean that a plaintext doesn't exist."

Now for the blowback - too much hype for a "junk theory" (I knew this was coming!)

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/except...ry-of.html

Lubos Motl's blog on physics, science in general and other things is always informative and entertaining.

I agree its oversimplification, but its as good as anything that is currently based on hard science.

Kenn

It's still a darn pretty pic