Ug. Not being a high energy physicist, a gentle introduction to this theory and its criticism is necessary. Unfortunately, the links provided aren't going to help:

The youtube link is little more than a cool screensaver.

The telegraph article seems to be mostly interested in how cool it is that the guy is a surfer, and describes the complexity of the E8 structure by saying it is "...fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan", a truly meaningless set of statements.

The motl blog seems to be completely dismissive of the guy from the get-go because he's an outsider, and says things like "This extraordinary surfer managed to collect five citations in the last thirteen years which is only 4 orders of magnitude below leading physicists" and "Every high school senior excited about physics should be able to see that the paper is just a long sequence of childish misunderstandings. I understood these things when I was 14." While his criticism may be valid, he doesn't exactly set himself up to be respected as an uninterested observer.

I don't mean to criticize crazymonk's posting ability by pointing out how information-free this all is. I imagine there possibly isn't a lay-level introduction to this stuff that doesn't have either the triviality of the telegraph article, the opacity of the script behind the youtube video, or the clubbish one-sided take from Motl. It's kind of a sad statement on the state of popular science writing.

"It's kind of a sad statement on the state of popular science writing."

His paper was only released a few days ago. Maybe we'll get an excellent article about this within the next month or so from another source.

You could also try these:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/dn12891-is-mathematical...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everythin...

I actually skimmed through part of his paper, and it would pretty much be impossible to understand without a thorough knowledge of physics and quantum particles.

Actually, I'm not being entirely fair. Popular science writing should be able to transcend our lack of thorough knowledge of physics and quantum particles -- and only a few writers have the ability to manage this feat.

Even David Foster Wallace wasn't able to handle popular science writing. It's tough.

I guess I'm mostly annoyed by the Telegraph's story. If that's really all they could come up with, they'd have been better off waiting until they had something intelligent to say. I'm also aghast at the attitude Motl has, and judging by some of the comments, I'm not alone, but I guess snobby elitism and scorn of outsiders comes with the territory, though he really needs to be taken down a peg.