E8 - An answer to everything?

Its not the first time I come across this 2d representation of a so called exceptional case of simple Lie groups (go figure why someone calls this *simple*). This one pictured here, E8, is the most complicated (ahhh, simply complicated then)

Anyway, despite being an interesting image, I didn't pay more attention to it until today, when I stumbled on this news:

Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

".... Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.

E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape."

What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8.... "

Pictures found in a google search :)

Well, seems pretty cool, never mind being pretty complicated :|