Homer Simpson almost predicted the mass of the elementary particle, the Higgs boson “god particle,” more than a decade before it was discovered, according to Dr. Simon Singh, author of The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets (via The Independent).
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In the 1998 episode “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace,” Homer becomes an inventor and is shown in front of a blackboard with a complicated equation.
“That equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson” Singh said of the episode. “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. It’s kind of amazing as Homer makes this prediction 14 years before it was discovered.”
Calling it “the most mathematical TV show on prime-time television in history,” Singh said, that a lot of the writers on The Simpsons are mathematicians and that the first full episode had a joke about calculus.
This is one of those scenarios where “almost’ is certainly a key word…
