Large Hadron Collider Damaged by Baguette

[persia]

The Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. It was first damaged by a coolant leak that destroyed some magnets and had to be shut down for a while. The restart was postponed to add some safety features. Now it has been shut down because a bird dropped a piece of bread on some of its outdoor machinery.

...The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.

This incident won't delay the reactivation of the facility later this month, but exposes yet another vulnerability of the what might be the most complex machine ever built. With freak accident after freak accident piling up over at CERN, the idea of time traveling particles returning from the future to prevent their own discovery is beginning to seem less and less far fetched.

Popular Science

[motorollin]

Some time in the future, headlines related to this story probably read something like "2009 Time Travel Discovery Averted by TimeBird".