Homer Simpson almost discovered the Higgs boson before any scientist
IMAGE: THE SIMPSONS
Some may refer to The Simpsons as "genius" but nobody expected this.
A new book titled The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets claims that donut-loving Homer Simpson nearly predicted the mass of the Higgs boson 14 years before any scientist.
During the episode "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace," which aired in September 1998, Homer writes an equation on a chalkboard, which turns out to be an equation that nearly predicts the mass of the Higgs boson a.k.a. the "God Particle."
The book's author Simon Singh told The Independent, "that equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson." He added, "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.”
The Higgs boson "is the mechanism that gives mass to elementary objects, meaning that its existence helps explain the existence of virtually everything else," Mashable's Lance Ulanoffexplained in 2013.
Below is a video from 2013 in which Singh explains Homer's solution.
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