The elusive Higgs boson, sometimes referred to as God's particle, was only discovered by physicists in 2012

Mar 3, 2015 08:47 GMT  ·  By

Let's face it, most people think of Homer Simpson as an avid donut eater and not much else. The thing is that, as it turns out, he might just be way brainier than the majority of folks can ever hope to be.

In a new book titled “The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets,” physicist and author Dr. Simon Singh says that, back in 1998, Homer predicted the mass of the Higgs boson with mind-boggling accuracy.

Even wackier, he made this prediction long before scientists with CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) even got around to finding the particle. Thus, it was in only 2012 that the Higgs boson was discovered.

First things first, what's the deal with this Higgs boson?

The existence of the Higgs boson, sometimes referred to as God's particle, was first predicted by a theoretical physicist named Peter Higgs and his colleagues in 1964.

The scientists proposed the existence of the Higgs boson to explain why other fundamental particles in the universe have mass. That's because, in particle physics, mass is not an intrinsic property.

Mind you, scientists did try to make it an intrinsic property, but when they started running complicated mathematical models to explain the behavior of elementary particles, they found that, when factored in as an intrinsic property, mass messed everything up.

So, the Higgs boson was theorized and then long sought after in an attempt to better understand and explore the Higgs field, which in turn is said to be the one that gives subatomic particles mass.

The idea is that, without this Higgs field, all elementary particles would be massless and travel around at the speed of light. Since we know that this is not the case, the Higgs field must be real and so must be the Higgs boson.

In case anyone was wondering, elementary particles that interact with the Higgs field acquire mass by bouncing off of it. By bouncing back and forth forever and for always, they kind of look like they are not moving and, therefore, act like they have mass.

This Higgs field is said to occupy the entire universe. It does not affect photons, which are the particles that comprise light and which, being massless, travel at, well, the speed of light, but it does affect other elementary particles.

As for the Higgs boson, the idea is that, just like photons carry electromagnetic force, the Higgs boson is essentially a carrier particle for the Higgs field.

What does Homer Simpson have to do with anything?

In an episode that aired in 1998, Homer Simpson stands in front of a blackboard that has a bunch of weird equations written down on it. According to Dr. Simon Singh, these equations, shown in the image below, predicted the mass of the Higgs boson 14 years before its discovery.

“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 physicist said in an interview, as cited by Huffington Post.

Worry not, it's not that Homer Simpson can outsmart pretty much all living beings. On the contrary, his momentary boost of knowledge can easily be explained: David X. Cohen and David Schiminovich, who worked together on the script, based the equation on what was then known about the Higgs boson.

These equations predicted the mass of the Higgs boson
These equations predicted the mass of the Higgs boson

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Home Simpson might be smarter than we give him credit for
These equations predicted the mass of the Higgs boson
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