Re:Wikipedia link to E8 - Still makes nooooo sense
by ajs (35943)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E8_(mathematics) [wikipedia.org]

Holy crap! - I can read all the words, but none of it makes any sense. It's like the took regular English words and gave them all different meanings. I haven't felt this uncomprehending in a loooong time - and even the dumbness felt from quantum chemistry pales to this. Well, a lot of it falls out of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_theory [wikipedia.org]

Which then gets you here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry_group [wikipedia.org]

Once you get those two, you can hit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiable_manifold [wikipedia.org]

and you're very close to a general understanding of the shape (no pun intended) of what E8 is all about, and can dive into:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_group [wikipedia.org]