Speaker
Latham Boyle
Description
When mathematical objects are classified, they often fall into two types: regular and exceptional. Do the the laws of physics governing our universe hail from the ocean of regular mathematics, or the island of exceptionality? During the past decade, Todorov and collaborators pointed out striking and intriguing connections between the standard model of particle physics, and the exceptional Jordan algebra. I will review this work, as well as some possible ideas for how we might build upon it, taking the chiral structure of the standard model as a crucial clue.