The Geometry of The Universe

An international team of mathematicians is creating a "periodic table" of 3-, 4-, and 5-dimensional "shapes" composing the Universe:

"As these building block shapes are revealed, the mathematicians will work out the equations that describe each shape and through this, they expect to develop a better understanding of the shapes' geometric properties and how different shapes are related to one another."
creating "...a directory that lists all the geometric building blocks and breaks down each one's properties using relatively simple equations."

" ...a computer modelling programme... should enable the researchers to pinpoint the basic building blocks for these multi-dimensional shapes from a pool of hundreds of millions of shapes...The researchers calculate that there are around 500 million shapes that can be defined algebraically in four dimensions and they anticipate that they will find a few thousand building blocks from which all these shapes are made."

"In our project we are looking for the basic building blocks of shapes. You can think of these basic building blocks as 'atoms', and think of larger shapes as 'molecules.' The next challenge is to understand how properties of the larger shapes depend on the 'atoms' that they are made from. In other words, we want to build a theory of chemistry for shapes," added Dr Coates.

One of the many reports on the study is here:

http://www.gizmag.com/periodic-table-of-shapes/17895/