Some think that the properties of our universe are based on strange numbers which have eight dimensions, called octonions.
Tag: octonions
Octonions: Do eight-dimensional numbers underlie the universe?
From Natalie Wolchover at Quanta: Complex numbers, suitably paired, form 4-D “quaternions,” discovered in 1843 by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton, who on the spot ecstatically chiseled the formula into Dublin’s Broome Bridge. John Graves, a lawyer friend of Hamilton’s, subsequently showed that pairs of quaternions make octonions: numbers that define coordinates in an […]