We analyze certain subgroups of real and complex forms of the Lie group E8, and deduce that any "Theory of Everything" obtained by embedding the gauge groups of gravity and the Standard Model into a real or complex form of E8 lacks certain representation-theoretic properties required by physical reality. The arguments themselves amount to representation theory of Lie algebras in the spirit of Dynkin's classic papers and are written for mathematicians.
arXiv comments
Final version, to appear in Communications in Mathematical Physics. The main difference, from the previous version, is the creation of a new section, containing a response to Lisi's objections to our work
FWIW supersymmetry and string theory were never convincing to people who value science, empiricism, epistemology, etc. This sort of pseudo-scientific hype is necessary to keep the money flowing under capitalism. See also "artificial intelligence", etc.…
Based on my reading of the first few pages of the paper (available here http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.2658 ), your description appears roughly correct. E8 is a lie group, which is a set of matrices which is closed under inversion and multiplication. In fact, E8 is a very large…
FWIW supersymmetry and string theory were never convincing to people who value science, empiricism, epistemology, etc. This sort of pseudo-scientific hype is necessary to keep the money flowing under capitalism. See also "artificial intelligence", etc.…
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