E8

Hi there, mathematicians. I assume you've heard the big news about E₈ by now:

248-dimension maths puzzle solved

An international team of mathematicians has detailed a vast complex numerical "structure" which was invented more than a century ago.

Mapping the 248-dimensional structure, called E8, took four years of work and produced more data than the Human Genome Project, researchers said.

Lie groups aren't a specialty of mine, so I'll hold off writing about this (for now), but you might be interested to read what a few other are saying.

• AIM press release: Mathematicians Map E₈
  
• New York Times: The Scientific Promise of Perfect Symmetry
  
• Good Math, Bad Math: The Mapping of the E₈ Lie Group (Minor Update)
  
• Not Even Wrong: E₈ Media Blitz
  
• The n-Category Café: News about E₈
  
• The Unapologetic Mathematician: A rough overview
  
• The Unapologetic Mathematician: Lie groups, Lie algebras, and representations
  

Tags: E₈, Lie groups, string theory