Garrett Lisi is an unusual physicist. After getting his Ph.D. from UC San Diego, he moved to the island of Maui to find an optimum balance between enjoying the outdoors and pursuing his own theoretical research. While chasing an unanswered question at the heart of Quantum Field Theory, he soon found himself looking at the most beautiful unified model of particle physics anyone had ever seen. Dr. Lisi has authored numerous publications, earned many awards, and presented in forums around the world. Wishing to share his good fortune, Dr. Lisi recently founded the Pacific Science Institute on the island of Maui, with the mission of making life better for scientists. His story and work have been featured at TED, in Outside Magazine, The New Yorker, Surfer, and Scientific American.
There is an interesting story unfolding in particle physics. The main motivation for building the Large Hadron Collider was to search for new particles. And in July of 2012, the LHC found the Higgs boson, confirming the existence of this entirely new, but widely expected elementary particle. But the Higgs wasn’t the only particle most…