The exceptional Lie group
E
8
plays a prominent role in both mathematics and theoretical physics. It is the largest symmetry group associated with the most general possible normed division algebra, namely, that of the non-associative real octonions, which—thanks to their non-associativity—form the only possible closed set of spinors (or rotors) that can parallelize the 7-sphere. By contrast, here we show how a similar 7-sphere also arises naturally from the algebraic interplay of the graded Euclidean primitives, such as points, lines, planes and volumes, which characterize the three-dimensional conformal geometry of the ambient physical space, set within its eight-dimensional Clifford-algebraic representation. Remarkably, the resulting algebra remains associative, and allows us to understand the origins and strengths of all quantum correlations locally, in terms of the geometry of the compactified physical space, namely, that of a quaternionic 3-sphere,
S
3
, with
S
7
being its algebraic representation space. Every quantum correlation can thus be understood as a correlation among a set of points of this
S
7
, computed using manifestly local spinors within
S
3
, thereby extending the stringent bounds of ±2 set by Bell inequalities to the bounds of
±
2
2
on the strengths of all possible strong correlations, in the same quantitatively precise manner as that predicted within quantum mechanics. The resulting geometrical framework thus overcomes Bell’s theorem by producing a strictly deterministic and realistic framework that allows a locally causal understanding of all quantum correlations, without requiring either remote contextuality or backward causation. We demonstrate this by first proving a general theorem concerning the geometrical origins of the correlations predicted by arbitrarily entangled quantum states, and then reproducing the correlations predicted by the EPR-Bohm and the GHZ states. The
raison d’être
of strong correlations turns out to be the Möbius-like twists in the Hopf bundles of
S
3
and
S
7
.
Violation of all two-party facet Bell inequalities by almost-quantum correlations
