Surfer physicist gets grant to study theory of everything

Last week, the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) announced it has awarded .7 million in grants to 33 researchers to study basic questions in physics and cosmology.

Among the grant winners was surfer/theoretical physicist A. Garrett Lisi (pictured), who made the news last year with an unpublished paper entitled ‘An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything.’ Lisi will get ,222 to work on his theory, which involves using a recently mapped 248-dimension mathematical structure called E₈ to unify all the fundamental particles and forces, including gravity. In the last round of awards in 2006, FQXi gave Lisi ,280 over two years.

A number of grants went out to theorists studying multiverse theories and quantum gravity. But two of the three biggest awards actually went to experimentalists. One recipient will look for changes in the universe’s fine structure constant using the rare element dysprosium. Another laboratory test will aim to answer why we don’t see quantum mechanical effects on large objects.

This second round of grants clears out the rest of the major money FQXi had to dispense in its first four years (it awarded .2 million at 2006).

At the moment, FQXi is financed by the Templeton Foundation. But as Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit notes, the foundation’s future physics funding may be uncertain, as the organisation is under new management following the recent death of its founder, Sir John Templeton.

“We’re actively looking for more funding,” says FQXi scientific director Max Tegmark. This might include money from other sources, possibly with matching grants from Templeton.

I think it’s great to see private infusions of money for research. But what do you think? Did FQXi pick the right projects to fund, in what might possibly be the last of Templeton’s largess?

Rachel Courtland, reporter (Image: FQXi)