There are several reasons to be excited about this theory: it may make predictions which are likely to be experimentally testable in the near future, it includes gravity along with other forces (the elusive holy grail for any “theory of everything”), and best of all it’s simple and elegant (although this may not be immediately apparent or accessible to laypersons).

Simplicity and elegance are not merely some kind of aesthetic preference: time and again, simple and elegant mathematics has been found to be “unreasonably effective” in explaining the properties of the universe, as Eugene Wigner famously noted (this is merely a well-founded empirical observation, though some claim to see in this some mystical or even theological cause). A theory using simple and elegant math is in a certain sense, therefore, more likely to be true than a cumbersome or kludgey theory.

John, you’re misunderstanding. E8 is a “group” (not in the usual English sense of the word, but using the precise mathematical definition of the term). Group theory is a branch of math that has been very useful in understanding the properties of subatomic particles. There is no claim being made that space or the universe itself somehow has 248 dimensions.

Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts.

and:

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.”

So which is it?

John

Way to go bro! literally!