Moduli of Abelian varieties, Vinberg theta-groups, and free resolutions

We present a systematic approach to studying the geometric aspects of Vinberg theta-representations. The main idea is to use the Borel-Weil construction for representations of reductive groups as sections of homogeneous bundles on homogeneous spaces, and then to study degeneracy loci of these vector bundles. Our main technical tool is to use free resolutions as an "enhanced" version of degeneracy loci formulas. We illustrate our approach on several examples and show how they are connected to moduli spaces of Abelian varieties. To make the article accessible to both algebraists and geometers, we also include background material on free resolutions and representation theory.Comment: 41 pages, uses tabmac.sty, Dedicated to David Eisenbud on the occasion of his 65th birthday; v2: fixed some typos and added reference

There is no "Theory of Everything" inside E8

We analyze certain subgroups of real and complex forms of the Lie group E8, and deduce that any "Theory of Everything" obtained by embedding the gauge groups of gravity and the Standard Model into a real or complex form of E8 lacks certain representation-theoretic properties required by physical reality. The arguments themselves amount to representation theory of Lie algebras in the spirit of Dynkin's classic papers and are written for mathematicians.Comment: Final version, to appear in Communications in Mathematical Physics. The main difference, from the previous version, is the creation of a new section, containing a response to Lisi's objections to our wor