Might be off-topic, but: the mention of E8 reminded me of a story a read a while back, about a physicist who has this theory that all atomic particles(?) could be embedded in E8 . It sounded so beautiful and I wanted to read it but can't find it anymore. Does that ring a bell? If it helps: this physicist was supposed to be a maverick, a surfer dude who was supposed to be brilliant, but was living like a beach bum or something like that. Memory's really fuzzy, so I could be wrong about some of these details...

Edit: found it. I should've searched a bit harder. His name is Garrett Lisi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_...