New findings are fueling an old suspicion that fundamental particles and forces spring from strange eight-part numbers called “octonions.” “Octonions are to physics what the Sirens were to Ulysses,” Decades on, no particles beyond those of the Standard Model have been found. Meanwhile, the strange beauty of the octonions has continued to attract the occasional independent-minded researcher, including Furey, the Canadian grad student who visited Günaydin four years ago. Looking like an interplanetary traveler, with choppy silver bangs that taper to a point between piercing blue eyes, Furey scrawled esoteric symbols on a blackboard, trying to explain to Günaydin that...