Perhaps you’ve noticed that Homer Simpson has been getting dumber as The Simpsons continues its run as the longest-running animated sitcom ever, but like a wise idiot once told us, stupid is as stupid does.
Dr. Simon Singh wrote a book in 2013 called The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets that included a spotlight on the 1998 episode “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace.” In that episode, Homer becomes obsessed with Thomas Edison and decides to become an inventor. A scene in the script required a glasses-clad Homer to be placed in front of a chalkboard with complex mathematical equations. One of the writers on staff had a physicist friend who was researching the then-theoretical Higgs Boson particle and nabbed a scientifically accurate equation from him:
“That equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson,” says Dr. Singh. “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.”...
Gotta love Homer and his bumbling brilliance created by some talented writers.