The original article at Quanta Magazine has been discussed here:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17575585" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17575585</a>
I highly recommend you watch her thesis on YouTube:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBTUVg91bao" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBTUVg91bao</a><p>You don’t have to be a math wiz to appreciate the octonion model and it’s implications for fundamental particle physics.<p>It really is a beautiful insight of profound proportions.
There are higher dimensional algebras, too. We have:
4-dimensional quaternions,
8-dimensional octonions,
16-dimensional sedenions,
32-dimensional trigintaduonions,
64-dimensional sexagintaquattuornions,
128-dimensional centumduodetrigintanions,
256-dimensional ducentiquinquagintasexions<p>Who knows, maybe reality is explained by even higher dimensional systems. The 32 dimensional algebra ends with "onion," so that's my pick.
Discussion about octonions from 12 days ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17575585" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17575585</a> (186 comments)