I found this rather interesting, not that I think this person is some bum or just a surfer dude.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/11/how-a-surfer--1.html
The inspiration behind Lisi's model is something you can actually see. It’s the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 – an eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887. The pattern was 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 said, "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!'"
What Lisi had realized was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8's 248 points. What remained were 20 gaps, which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity.
You are like a walking library of vast knowledge and information. I enjoy reading new theories when they come to my attention, but still for the most part playing catchup in a very large world of physics.
