How The Simpsons Predicted The ‘God Particle’ Before Real-Life Scientists

“The Simpsons” episode “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace” (September 20, 1998) finds Homer (erstwhile genie Dan Castellaneta) becoming despondent over the lack of major accomplishments in his life. Looking for meaning to his existence in a library, Homer stumbles upon a (pop-up) biography of Thomas Edison, and he is inspired. Homer quits his job to become an inventor, using Edison’s volume of inventions to gauge his own success. 

Homer’s inventions are, perhaps predictably, terrible. He invents a shotgun, for instance, that can blast makeup directly onto a person’s face. He invents an easy chair with a toilet installed, designed for people too lazy to rise during their favorite TV shows. Homer takes his inventions very seriously, but he can’t invent anything practical. 

During one of his invention montages, Homer is writing advanced calculations on a chalkboard, a shocking activity for someone as dumb as Homer, and a useless endeavor, seeing as he is inventing toilets and shotguns. The equations were all, as math nerds might be able to tell you, actual advanced equations, culled from real-life professors that had been contacted by series writer (and degree-holder in both computer science and physics) David X. Cohen. “The Simpsons,” largely thanks to Cohen, got a lot of its math right, and Cohen carried his mathematical and engineering obsessions over to “Futurama,” which he and “Simpsons” inventor Matt Groening co-created. 

As it happens, one of the random equations on Homer’s chalkboard was a calculation that, when worked out, gave the mass of the Higgs boson, or “The God Particle,” which made it possible for stars, planets, and life to emerge. According to Dr. Simon Singh’s book “The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets,” the mass calculation was surprisingly accurate for a cartoon show. The astonishing thing, however, was that Homer wrote down that equation in 1998, and the Higgs boson wasn’t observed for the first time until an experiment conducted in 2012. 

For those who don’t know what the Higgs boson is, here’s a (very brief) primer, explained by someone who is most definitely a layperson (that is: yours truly). The Higgs field is essentially a force within particle physics that prevents massive particles (that is: any particle that has mass) from zipping around at the speed of light. Because poetic metaphors help when describing advanced physics, the Higgs field is like a “syrup” that forced particles to slow down and obey the speed limit (that is: under the speed of light). My syrup metaphor comes from writer Andrew Smith, who also tried to explain the phenomenon on a HubPages website. The Higgs field slows down any particles that have mass. Particles that have no mass, meanwhile, can zip about as fast as light, free and unfettered. 

The boson is a fast moving particle that passes around through other clustered particles that have been “slowed” by the Higgs field. It’s a particle that grants mass to other particles, and its existence validated the Standard Model of particle physics. It was so fundamental to the Model, it sometimes has the nickname of the God Particle. If you want to know more, though, perhaps you should contact an actual particle physicist. 

A layperson can tell you, however, that the boson was theorized by Peter Higgs way back in 1964, as a potential explanation for why certain particles gain mass. The particle remained theoretical, however, as there was no way to actually observe it. It wouldn’t be until 2012, and a series of experiments with the Large Hardon Collider at CERN in Switzerland, that physicists would be able to create and record the mass of the boson for the first time. Higgs’ theory, it turns out, was correct. 

But Homer Simpson beat those eggheads at CERN to the punch.

The fact that the equations on Homer’s chalkboard were somewhat accurate was likely the result of actual theories being traded by particle physicists and mathematicians in 1998. The mystery of the Higgs boson was well known in the field, and it was likely that David X. Cohen had contacted people (sadly, their names have not been revealed) who were working on the problem. Dr. Singh, in his book, expressed his amazement thus: 

“That equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson. […] 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.” 

For the record, the mass of a Higgs boson is 125.11±0.11 GeV/c². You know, in case it comes up on “Jeopardy!”

Because so many physicists and mathematicians wrote for “The Simpsons” (and later, “Futurama”), many articles have been written about the shows’ love for the sciences. Dr. Singh not only wrote a whole book on the topic, but one can find no shortage of online essays and other tomes venerating that love. “The Simpsons” and “Futurama” may be the smartest “dumb” shows out there, as they surround slightly blow average characters, often plunged into a world clearly constructed by highly educated people. If you have no knowledge of physics, you will laugh. If you have a lot of knowledge of physics, you will roar.