TMC
09-27-2022, 09:12 PM
https://www.looper.com/1027923/the-simpsons-episode-that-came-close-to-a-major-scientific-breakthrough/
The almost-breakthrough was documented in an equation Homer wrote on a blackboard
The discovery is a bit of an Easter egg in the 1998 episode "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace," as viewers of the episode could very well have watched the whole thing without noticing it. As Homer is trying to emulate Thomas Edison's prolific inventiveness, he is seen looking at several short equations on a blackboard. In the first one, the first symbols in the equation, "M(Ho)," refer to the Higgs-Boson particle, an elementary particle first proposed in 1964 (via CERN (https://home.cern/science/physics/higgs-boson)).
"The equation is a playful combination of various fundamental parameters, namely the Planck constant, the gravitational constant, and the speed of light," Simon Singh said in his 2013 book "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets." (https://www.google.ca/books/edition/The_Simpsons_and_Their_Mathematical_Secr/feg_AQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22The+equation+is+a+playful+combination+of+various+fundamental+parameters,+namely+the+Planck+constant,+the+gravitational+constant,+and+the+speed+of+light,%22+the+simpsons+and+their+mathematical+secrets&pg=PA29&printsec=frontcover) "If you look up these numbers and plug them into the equation, it predicts a mass of 775 giga-electron-volts (GeV), which is substantially higher than the 125 GeV estimate that emerged when the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012."
Singh says that 775 GeV was not a bad guess for an amateur, though, considering that Homer was calculating this 14 years before (https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsthe-higgs-boson) CERN physicists were able to track down and confirm the particle's existence using the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. In an interview with The Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/how-homer-simpson-discovered-the-higgs-boson-over-a-decade-before-scientists-10079006.html), he says Homer's number is "only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs-boson actually is," which is actually an amazing feat.
The almost-breakthrough was documented in an equation Homer wrote on a blackboard
The discovery is a bit of an Easter egg in the 1998 episode "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace," as viewers of the episode could very well have watched the whole thing without noticing it. As Homer is trying to emulate Thomas Edison's prolific inventiveness, he is seen looking at several short equations on a blackboard. In the first one, the first symbols in the equation, "M(Ho)," refer to the Higgs-Boson particle, an elementary particle first proposed in 1964 (via CERN (https://home.cern/science/physics/higgs-boson)).
"The equation is a playful combination of various fundamental parameters, namely the Planck constant, the gravitational constant, and the speed of light," Simon Singh said in his 2013 book "The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets." (https://www.google.ca/books/edition/The_Simpsons_and_Their_Mathematical_Secr/feg_AQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22The+equation+is+a+playful+combination+of+various+fundamental+parameters,+namely+the+Planck+constant,+the+gravitational+constant,+and+the+speed+of+light,%22+the+simpsons+and+their+mathematical+secrets&pg=PA29&printsec=frontcover) "If you look up these numbers and plug them into the equation, it predicts a mass of 775 giga-electron-volts (GeV), which is substantially higher than the 125 GeV estimate that emerged when the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012."
Singh says that 775 GeV was not a bad guess for an amateur, though, considering that Homer was calculating this 14 years before (https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsthe-higgs-boson) CERN physicists were able to track down and confirm the particle's existence using the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. In an interview with The Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/how-homer-simpson-discovered-the-higgs-boson-over-a-decade-before-scientists-10079006.html), he says Homer's number is "only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs-boson actually is," which is actually an amazing feat.