According to The Telegraph, a science writer claims that the mass of the Higgs boson was predicted by Homer Simpson in a 1998 episode called The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace of the cartoon series The Simpsons.
In that episode, Homer Simpson is shown to be working on an equation on a blackboard.
Coincidently, the scientists at the Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs boson 14 years later, and lo and behold, the mathematics that Homer was writing down on the Simpsons were eerily similar to the same equations used to verify the Higgs boson.
But before we go any further, let's answer your most burning question - What exactly is this Higgs boson thing?
The Higgs boson is also known as the "God particle", and that pretty much explains what it is.
According to Simon Singh, the author of The Simpsons, "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 Simpsons' creators are really passionate about the subject and most of their writers are mathematicians. It is also one of the most mathematical TV shows on prime-time television in history.
Simon Singh hopes that The Simpsons might inspire the math loving teenagers by this.
Simon Singh has a PhD in particle physics from the Cambridge University and CERN, Geneva. He hopes that people/mathematicians around the world would be inspired and nourished by this and the enthusiasm of The Simpsons' creators.
