World of the Bizarre

Did Homer discover the Higgs Boson ?

By T.K. Randall
March 2, 2015 ·  9 comments

The bizarre coincidence relates to a 1998 episode of The Simpsons. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 Rhbrakman He might not be the sharpest tool in the box and would be the last person you'd think of when it comes to making groundbreaking scientific discoveries, yet in a bizarre twist the fictional Springfield resident somehow managed to come up with an equation to calculate the mass of the elusive Higgs Boson a full 14 years before the particle was officially discovered by scientists at Cern.

The formula was featured in the 1998 episode "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace" in which Homer writes it on a blackboard.

"A lot of the writers on The Simpsons are mathematicians," said Simon Singh, author of The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets."That equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson. If you work it out, you get the mass of a Higgs boson that's only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs boson actually is."

Whether the writers even knew what the equation was about at the time remains unclear but it's certainly remarkable that it would to come to hold such significance over a decade later.

Perhaps Homer will further explore his newfound mathematical prowess in a future episode.

Source: Telegraph | Comments (9)

Tags: Homer Simpson, Higgs Boson