One of the biggest particle accelerators in the world, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which is the prized possession of European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) was hit by a piece of bread that was supposedly been dropped by a bird onto the outer surface of the accelerator. This bird attack effectively created “technical problems” in the supercooled magnetic section of the LHC.

The Large Hadron Collider is the longest and the particle accelerator in the world as it stretches 27 kilometers covering the distance between Geneva airport and the nearby Jura mountains. The LHC has cost the CERN $10 billion to build and is expected to provide the scientists a look into the past, at a time when the universe was born. However, if the attack by the rouge bird on the LHC had been successful, the particle accelerator would have switched to fail safe and would have shut down automatically. At the time of the collision with the piece of bread, the accelerator wasn’t turned on, therefore no serious damage was caused.

On a more serious note, the damage that the bread piece could have caused is said to be nothing in front of the catastrophic failure that happened in the month of September last year, when one of the electric circuits failed during a world renowned experiment and nearly destroyed the highly fragile behemoth of a machine. The bird drop thought miniscule in size caused the LHC to shot out as it landed on one of the bus bars, that raised the temperature of the particle accelerator to 8 kelvins, which is considered to be extremely high for the device.

Via The Register.