Given the time it happened and , you know , that he ’s a cartoon , the reply is that Homer Simpson did occur pretty close to figuring out the hoi polloi of the Higgs Boson before scientists did .
Screencap from Springfield ! Springfield !
This is from the episode “ The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace , ” which aired on September 20 , 1998 . The installment has Homer bring in that his life ’s one-half over and he has n’t accomplished anything . to fix it , he tries to emulate his hero ( for this installment ) Thomas Edison .
One of the scenes in the episode has Homer work at a blackboard with an equation try out to figure out the mass of the Higgs Boson . While Simon Singh , authorThe Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets , tellsThe Independentthat Homer got jolly cheeseparing :
If you work it out , you get the mass of a Higgs boson that ’s only a bit larger than the nano - the great unwashed of a Higgs boson actually is . It ’s kind of amazing as Homer take this forecasting 14 year before it was discovered
David Kaplan , particle physicist at John Hopkins University , differentiate theLos Angeles Timesthat the result of Homer ’s calculation is 777 gigaelectronvolts ( GeV. ) Which is a bit off from the number the squad at the Large Hadron Collider eventually found : around 125 GeV.
Given that Homer made his surmise 17 class ago , it ’s not that bad . Even if the scientist alrady have a go at it at the clip that the mass had to be lower than 777 GeV. And Kaplan also say theLos Angeles Timesthat Homer was almost even closer :
The last term in Homer ’s equality is the solid root of “ hc ” divided by “ G. ” Presumably , “ G ” is the universal gravitational constant quantity , “ c ” is the speed of sparkle , and “ h ” is Planck ’s ceaseless . If Homer had used a variant call the reduce Planck ’s constant ( which divide “ h ” by 2 pi ) , the answer to the par would have been about 310 GeV , Kaplan said .
Homer would have done even well if he had n’t made pi the first terminus in his equivalence , Kaplan supply . Without it , he ’d have had “ a dainty guess of 99 GeV , which would not have been too shabby , ” he said .
It ’s always nice to see that the the great unwashed making our entertainment are n’t just making up gibberish and that they ’re actually doing some legwork . think of , there are evenjokes that can make you smarter . Although , in creation , it ’s a lilliputian disconcerting to realize that Homer could do this with just a spot of breathing in and effort .
10 Futurama Jokes That Will Make You Smarter
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