Christian Flohr Nielsen

Beauty of the Beast - An exceptional simple theory of everything

Supervisor: Nathan Harshman

Date student colloquium: Monday 22/5 kl. 14.15

Unification of the standard model and the theory of general relativity is a problem physicists have tried to solve for decades. Even finding a Grand unified theory of the elements of the standard model is a struggle.

In this colloquium I will shed some light upon what the standard model is, and how physicists use tools of beauty and symmetry to explain how our universe works. Then we will move on to understand what a unified theory is, and explore a theory developed by Garret Lisi. He is a Hawaiian surfer with a PhD from San Diego university, and his story has attracted huge media publicity which may have caused his theory to become as popular as it is.

Lisi believes that the largest exceptional Lie group E8 could be used as the backbone of a theory of everything. This group is very complex but it’s structure is said to be one of the most beautiful in mathematics, hence Beauty of the Beast