While at a clinical behaviour support conference today I was distracted by a close colleague playing with one of the slinkies left on our table amongst other toys and snakes.
The circles of the slinky and the way they were interacting with each reminded me of something I had come across a long time ago - The Lie group E8 with 248 dimensions.
Background
So far, attempts to understand the workings of the forces of nature have been fragmentary. The mathematics describing the very small, i.e, atoms and sub-particles, does not hold for the very large such as that of gravity. The 2 sets of mathematics describing the small and the large do not fit together.
Attempts to develop a single overarching grand unified theory (the theory for everything) that might help explain the forces caused by the movement of sub-particles as well as the force carrying gravitons (for gravity) have proven extremely difficult.
According to some (See Garrett Lisi) the unification of the four fundamental forces may be described by Lie group e8, a mathematical shape that is a collection of circles twisting around each other in a specific pattern 248 times.
To attempt to visualize this is impossible. The simplest Lie group is a circle. Now think about taking a second circle and wrapping it around the first, ensuring it is perpendicular to the first resulting in a Torus, or the surface of a donut.
Now, to end up with the Lie group e8, continue to do this 248 times, producing a shape so complex that computer assisted graphics systems struggle to represent.
The idea of the he Lie group e8 is that each circle represents a particle, so one circle may be an electron, another, a particular force. Interestingly, the theory goes that the way these circles are interacting with each other may be similar to the manner forces interact with each other.
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