E8 Theory of Everything conclusively disproved

Elegant but unfortunately inaccurate, Garett Lisi's E8 Theory of Everything sought to map out all particle (known and yet to be discovered: see Higgs Boson among many others) interactions in physics in a Grand Unified Theory (GUT). The E8, for those of us who are not mathematicians, is a complex member of the Lie Group of mathematical structures of dimension 248. As an individual with a profound interest in physics, it's a relief to conclude that there is an exceptional amount of work to be done (who would have thought?).

Lisi's Theory has in criticized by a number of experts of both mathematics and physics, including Dr. Skip Garibaldi, of Emory University. According to a recent article on Physorg, Garibaldi collaborated with University of Texas Physicist Jacques Distler to conclusively debunk the Lisi's Theory of Everything by proving some formula's in Lisi's E8 paper simply do not work.

In Garibaldi's words,

"You can think of E8 as a room, and the four subgroups related to the four fundamental forces of nature as furniture, let's say chairs," Garibaldi explains. "It's pretty easy to see that the room is big enough that you can put all four of the chairs inside it. The problem with 'the theory of everything' is that the way it arranges the chairs in the room makes them non-functional."

If you're interested, you can read Garibaldi's paper here.

Source: PhysOrg

Life beyond our universe

This is the kind of thing that we just can't understand. The scope of our own universe is beyond what is imaginable. I think the extent to which we can know and study the existence of multiple universes is knowing that we can't know. In an article posted on Physorg, some MIT physicists explore the aforementioned possibility.

If you're brave enough, catch the article here.

Let the smashing begin: LHC back up and running

(PhysOrg.com) -- For the Christmas holiday, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was shut down for a break and for a little technical tinkering. But next week, the hope is that the LHC will start up again around the 25 of February.

Read the news here.

Goodbye power cord; You will not be missed.

A group of researchers at MIT have made yet another breakthrough in wireless power. By imbedding a large copper coil in a wall or ceiling and using electromagnetic resonance to transfer power between multiple devices, physicists André Kurs, Robert Moffatt, and Marin Soljačić have managed to generate fairly high efficiency by strategically coupling multiple devices as opposed to a single device. When the devices resonate at the same frequency, power is transferred with little interference by other objects resonating out of that frequency. Efficiency decreases with distance, but the system works from more than 2 meters away.

Click the read link for the goodies.

Fall Into a Black Hole at the Speed of Light (Simulation)

"Not too many of us have actually seen a black hole, but Thomas Müller, physics student, and Daniel Weiskopf, computer science professor, at the University of Stuttgart, have programmed a vision for us. With their simulation of a black hole in space, you can really imagine what it would be like to be in the pull of one." (PhysOrg)

Read the full article and catch the videos here.