Visualisation of E8 structure by Claudio Rocchini (Creative Commons licence)
Something once described as “perhaps the most beautiful structure in mathematics” has been found in the lab for the first time.
The E8 structure is a symmetry in 248 dimensions that was discovered as a maths problem in 1887 and resolved only 120 years later in 2007. Now it has been seen in the lab for the first time.
A team of physicists led by Radu Coldea at Oxford University found it during experiments on crystals. The team chilled a cobalt and niobium crystal to 0.04 C above absolute zero and then applied a strong magnetic force to it. The quantum spin of electrons in the crystal was found to be arranged in keeping with the E8 structure.
As well as its beauty and status as a long-standing mathematical puzzle, E8 is linked to two competing contenders for a “theory of everything” that could explain the most fundamental aspects of physics.
The E8 structure was linked in the 1970s to calculations relating to string theory. Then in 2007 Garrett Lisi used E8 itself as the basis for his alternative “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything”. Lisi described E8 as “most beautiful”.
The story of how E8 was mapped in 2007 by a transatlantic team using supercomputers is fascinating in its own right. The supercomputers were needed because the E8 equations are relatively compact, but they produce massive outputs. The Physorg.com website said that the E8 calculation was about 60 Gigabytes in size, compared with 1 GB for the human genome.
Learn more:
The New Scientist reports the E8 appearance
See a scalable vector graphic of Claudio Rocchini’s E8 graphic
