|
LHC broken by bread and birds |
|
|
|
Written by Nick Farrell
|
|
Friday, 06 November 2009 10:54 |
That is technology for you
Humanity's most complicated machine, which is designed to
find the God particle, has been broken thanks to the action of birds armed with
a stick of French bread.
CERN is reporting that the Large Hadron Collider has been
shutdown yet again after a piece of bread fell into the outdoor
machinery. The bit that the bread found its way into operates at 1.9
Kelvin, but, thanks to the bread bomb it overheated.
This nearly causing the LHC's niobium-titanium magnets to
cease superconducting and could have crippled the LHC yet again. CERN claims that it won't delay the full reactivation of
the device, scheduled for later this month. It believes that a passing bird
dropped the bread into the machinery.
Some people believe that the LHC is being sabotaged by
boffins from the future who think it might cause all sorts of kirfuffles to the
laws of physics. Still it is a little rare when future scientists train birds
to drop French rolls into the machine. Next it will be a pride of quantum cats
who may or may not be alive. (One of them may or may not have scared the bird, making it drop the bread. sub.ed.)
|
Mobiles 