• Click here to read a formal presentation of the theory, if you dare.
By mapping known subatomic particles, plus 20 imaginary ones, onto the 248 points of the E8 lattice, and then rotating the lattice in a computer model, Lisi shows how the particles elegantly combine to form three of the four forces.
The imaginary ones combine to form gravity, for which subatomic particles have only been theorized.
• Click here to watch a video of the lattice being rotated.
"Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi's theory," David Ritz Finkelstein of Georgia Tech tells New Scientist. "I think that this must be more than coincidence and he really is touching on something profound."
But Professor Marcus du Sautoy of Oxford tells Britain's Daily Telegraph that "there seem to be a lot of things still to fill in."
For his part, Lisi self-mockingly calls his finding "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything," and downplays the suggestion that it may be the Grand Unified Theory.

"The theory is very young, and still in development," he tells the Daily Telegraph. "Right now, I'd assign a low (but not tiny) likelihood to this prediction."

He hopes the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, currently being built on the Swiss-French border will find some of his 20 imaginary gravity-related particles.

"This is an all-or-nothing kind of theory — it's either going to be exactly right, or spectacularly wrong," Lisi tells New Scientist. "I'm the first to admit this is a long shot. But it ain't over till the LHC sings."

• Click here for the New Scientist story, and here for the Daily Telegraph version.