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What is E8 : E8 is a complex structure with 248 dimensions. It took 4 years of prep work by 18 mathematicians and computer scientists and 3 full days of computer time to solve a matrix with over 205 billion parts that contained 60 times more data than the Human Genome Project.

Math team solves the unsolvable E8. The researchers behind the work explain in a press announcement:

Lie groups come in families. The classical groups A1, A2, A3, … B1, B2, B3, … C1, C2, C3, … and D1, D2, D3, … rise like gentle rolling hills towards the horizon. Jutting out of this mathematical landscape are the jagged peaks of the exceptional groups G2, F4, E6, E7 and, towering above them all, E8. 

Professor of mathematics Peter Sarnak at Princeton University said of the team’s result: “This is exciting. Understanding and classifying the representations of Lie Groups has been critical to understanding phenomena in many different areas of mathematics and science including algebra, geometry, number theory, Physics and Chemistry. This project will be valuable for future mathematicians and scientists." [See: http://aimath.org/E8/.]

David Vogan, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, is one of the team of mathematicians that worked on E8. He described their work as: “…as complicated as symmetry can get.” [BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6466129.stm]

The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1994 by John Fry and Steve Sorenson. Its goals are to expand the scope of mathematical knowledge through research projects, sponsored conferences, and the development of an on-line mathematics library. The home Web page of AIM is http://www.aimath.org/.

A brief mathematical description of E8 appears at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E8_%28mathematics%29.

More information about E8 appears at the article “Mathematicians Map E8”: http://aimath.org/E8/