Hi, I hope you have not missed Ian Steward's paper on the number 8, considered as a TOE in the last new scientist. It mentions a paper by John Baez on the octonions. The octonions seems to be a key ingredient for the quantization of general relativity.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/Octonions/ I am too buzy now to make comments but it seems *very* interesting, if not convincing. You can find many discussions on the net about Baez's paper. For example, one by Osher Doctorow http://superstringtheory.com/forum/superboard/messages/114.html Bruno
