Baguette-toting bird stalls atom smasher

I t looks like a piece of sensitive equipment exposed to outdoors is not protected well. No common sense thinking from such highly eductaed scientific folks.

maybe it's true. maybe the future IS rippling back in time to stop the discovery of the higgs boson that some refer to as 'the god particle.' Or maybe this thing is experiencing it's fair share of complications due to how extremely complex it is. I guess only time will tell.

Really? we're exploring forms of energy that we do not fully understand. Some, who have claimed could cause some pretty ugly effects on how we enjoy our everyday lives. And they let something like bread shut it down? Are you kidding me? Is the Obama administration running this thing?

If it wasn't damaged and nothing happened why report it?!?

Ummmm... suresh, you might not have any idea what you're talking about.

I'd be interested to see the "common sense" you'd bring to bear on the design and construction of one of the most complex and enormous machines ever built by humankind. I'm sure you'd be able to design it so that it would never break.

Sheesh. So easy to be a critic when you have no idea what you're talking about.

If a little piece of bread can wipe this thing out, I don't think it has a chance of accomplishing anything useful. I wonder if it can be used on a rainy day?

This goes back to the old line about how can you be an instellar traveler when you postpone liftoff because of bad weather.

That is incredible that a 10B dollar operation can be thwarted by a bread crumb. Common, lets fix the problem and accelerate some particles.

Suresh,

You have to remember, they are European and explains a lot of their problems.

Hmmmmm.... What happens when it rains or a fly lands on the equipment? Billions of dollars spent and this thing can't even light off.

it appears even mother nature wants this stopped.

I am sure CERN will require that its staff undergo common sense training immediately.

Put a roof on it !

A piece of bread can short circuit the equipment? Gee I wonder what a little rain water might do.

Leave it to people who can plot the trajectory of a probe to Saturn not to be able to tie their own shoes or realize, " Oh, I have a $20 gazillion dollar piece of equipment here. Let's leave it exposed to the elements and to bread crumbs!"

Maybe this thing was not meant to be turned on..............?

I'm glad this $10 Billion Doller Plus Waste of Science is off to a glorious start, it should have never been built in the 1st place, you try to play God an screw up then what happens to the rest of us on the Planet? Whats the plan if something goes wrong during one of your more dangerous expierements? If OppenHiemer could have seen the future an how close the world came to Nuclear Annihilation in October '63 an '83 he would have never made such a weapon. If we keep pushing the bounderies of scientific knowledge, one day were all going to get burned.
So keep it up birds an other creatures an hopefully they keep having "Accidents", watch the day it goes full power is Dec 21st 2012.

Perhaps you already heard about this. Made me think of your comments about baguettes being served at virtually every meal when you were in France, so obviously the bird had no problem finding one.

It's a shame that Papa Bush and congressional idiots ruined America's scientific future by canceling the Super Collider project nearly 20 years ago - all in the name of small change (compared to Wall Street bailouts). Where oh where have our American taxpayer dollars gone? To the French and Swiss, of course, who continue to waffle in their own ignorance at the world's expense.

Good thing the bird didn't crap on it.

If such equipment is so sensitive to mishap, what will happen if they are successful in smashing an atom? Do the risks justify the rewards?

Is it really safe to create a mini black hole that can be suspended magnetically unless of course something minor and trivial happens
that would shut it all down. May i remind you a blck hole is defined as
particles that continually attract other particles which cannot escape.
So I do not buy the It will run out of energy theory. Seems you forgot to make it safe.

What kind of common sense would you expect from a buncch of geeks spending that kind of money.

there is a statue of Shiva outside CERN – in Hinduism, Brahma is the creator, Vishnu is the maintainer or preserver, and Shiva is the destroyer... coincidence?

LHC was built using the Harvard Philosophy: Waste a lot of money and have nothing to show for it.

I could have not said it better, Suresh. If it was my installation, it would be protected from weather, quakes, power interruption, physical intrusions and internal mis-management. I owe it to the world to not let anything in this critical science experiment get out of hand.

Is the Large Hadron Collider sabotaging itself from the future?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article6879293.ece

So, they have this multi-billion dollar highly intelligent equipment that's at risk from bird droppings? Are these scientists so bright they're dumb?

Since when do French have any common sense?

That is just what I was thinking! All thoes brains and no common sence! Are we to belive them then when they say that it would be impossible to form a black hole with this device that could destrroy this world. It all reminds me of Steven Halkings speach about the beginnings of life . He stated that it must be very easy for life to originate as it occured very early in the life of the earth - almost as soon as the conditions got favorable. He futher went on to say that the reason that we havent found alian life else where is that once it evolves into a advanced form of life it extincts itsself!

Our ZDNet blogger doesn't seem to know the difference between a baguette and a croissant. Chocolate filled croissant, perhaps, but a chocolate filled baguette? Hopefully he knows his subatomic particle better than that.

I tried to tell ya last year. God laughs! call it the Noah theory.

It is a funny thing that this happened, But it does show that no matter how complicated a device there is always a weak spot. Even scientists can forget the little stuff.

Maybe the gods are telling them to stop wondering the origins of the world because it will be the end of this world. They could have spent $10billion dollars to retrofit millions of homes and businesses with solar, wind and water power instead of this stupid project.

These are the folks who think they are smart enough to figure out how the universe works?

Perhaps we should just leave the running of the universe to God.

Let me get this right, ...a piece of bread brought down a $10 billion machine?!?!??!? Um..... What!?!?!?!?

that thing is dangerous. from what i hear they are trying to make anti-matter. the same stuff that makes up black holes. if they mess up they could create a black hole here on earth. that wouldnt be cool. and so far nobody really knows whats going to happen when they fire that thing up.

Billion of dollars spent and they can not keep birds out ? This project is doomed to failure not from it's black hole possibilities but from sheer stupidity!

This has to be the most frustrating project ever. "Oh no 5 billion dollars and months of work because Bill sneezed. Way to go Bill!"

I suppose this may be funny to some but what I find disconcerting is that the LHC is capable of recreating the 1st seconds of our universe and who knows what else, has cost billions of dollars over many years, and is susceptible to a bird dropping a piece of bread?

If this design oversight can shut down the LHC, what other oversights and mistakes exist and what is the potential?

Never fear... The same thinking that went into general outdoor planning of this 10 billion dollar marvel also went into safety planning.

Massive Fail.

so this blog is where science and religion collide huh? how did we ever argue about such things for the last few thousand years?

No, wrong. Those two Kashmiri senior terrorists eaten by a bear - one of the guys was named Qaiser (kaiser, like kaiser bun). But the particle smasher...THE PARTICLE SMASHER...I have to get up off the floor for laughing at this one...Singin' like the bi-narys...

No doubt the "Threat Risk Team" CERN assembled from the best minds in Europe had a plan for earthquakes, terrorist bombs, probably even meteor strikes! Alas, as is the case in an astouding number of accidents in high tech endevours, from a chunk of rocket insulation or ice bringing disaster to the shuttle program to an iceberg finding the weakest part of the greatest ocean liner in the world, brilliance has a way of dissmissing the simple. These "Big Tech" projects need to go public for help in guessing what might go wrong. I bet an internet poster would have seen the possibility of an animal being able to throw the proverbial "monkey wrench" into the LHC!

I bet it will work on 2012 no sooner and forget later..

If they failed to have enough forsight to protect a piece of outdoors equipment that senstive, how safe is the machine???

This sounds totally blown out of proportion by the press - note that the electrical device is not described anywhere. It is probably a minor high voltage device of no consequence. Anything sensitive about the machine is underground, or inside a building... for common sense reasons.

I don't want to bash the LHC, after all I'm a pretty big fan. But I can't help thinking this sounds a lot like a "dog ate my homework" kind of excuse.

Well, professionals built the Titanic and amateurs built the Arc. This comes to mind here.

joseph davidovic

It seems like this is a lame attempt to blame something that cannot defend itself. My guess is that someone was sloppy with the morning bagel and feels like the public is gullible and will accept any explanation offered by a scientist, and no credible evidence is required.

Why would there be chocolate in a baguette? We don't do such things here.

Had any of these guys ever worked for a living as, say, a janitor, who might have had to clean droppings off a property, they might have realised that an exposed electrical device needs protection . Leaving the power supply to something so expensive unprotected makes me question whether they have built something that should be turned on at all.

very very funny !

I guess it never rains there, and wind-blown leaves never come near that vent... !?

suresh, the physicists who use the LHC may have designed the accelerator, but they didn't build the thing. Engineers did that and this unprotected thermal vent may have been a bonehead mistake by a construction worker. Sometimes engineers get it wrong; it is impossible to think of every little thing that may go wrong on so large and complex a device. Remember the tragedies from both the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. The LHC is far more complex than either of those projects.

Perhaps it needs to be exposed for heat dissipation or other scientific reasons suresh. Or maybe it's just your ignorance of how the LHC works that you perceive to be a lack of common sense on the scientists part.

A bird? Say what?

Pretty crummy if you ask me.

suresh: [snip] "I t looks like a piece of sensitive equipment exposed to outdoors is not protected well. No common sense thinking from such highly eductaed scientific folks".

Your spell check appears to have malfunctioned. Follow the trail of bread crumbs.

Straw Man argument.

This reminds me of the time Luke Skywalker took out the Deathstar with his x-wing fighter. I guess the bird was a re-incarnation of the Jedi himeself. LOL

The universe is trying to communicate to the wolrd in a zen
statement "the bird with the bit of baguette is a symbol of your
consciousness meditate on it and stop wasting your time on the L.H.C. "...

Divine Intervention

what a waste of money. spend it on helping people in africa and serve better purpose

This is hilarious.I doubt it will affect the LHC long run but just the idea of a French Bird temporarily putting out of commission an item of that
size and complexity with a bit of baguette is just hilarious.

Hmm...you'd think such sensitive equipment would be covered and protected from the elements??

..... Curious: What mass or cavity circumvents the point of impact?... is there a "shear factor " be be considered; somewhat, as a diamond being split, upon the atoms being smashed?

The bird was given that piece of bread by a servant of God. It saved our planet from a black hole doomsday. Next time we won't be so lucky – when Satan intervenes and encourages a hunter to shoot the next bird while en route.

You're saying a dumb bird dropping a piece of bread can bring a $10 billion machine to its knees? Unbelieveable! Think what a bird-brained terrorist could do with a whole loaf of sour dough! What were the design engineers smoking when they designed this piece of crap?

After a few billion smackers it appears the only thing they have forgotten to include in this project is common sense. Good grief, a bird and a baquette? This coupled with the great reveal that putting resistors in parallel will quench the current much faster than having them in series. Ohm would be so proud. I can't figure out if their problems are bad engineers or bad management. My gut says that the project is top heavy with brains but with no real leadership. Come on folks, watch what you're doing. I am losing confidence in both your knowledge and you beliefs that this machine is not harmful to our world. Maybe, just maybe, you're wrong. Of course then what, I guess we can blame the cook for ruining the roast.

That big expensive experiment to discover how the universe was created was stopped by one of God's creations. Those scientists could have gotten a Bible for free!

those were my first thoughts exactly suresh!

Bird strike!

It's scary to think, based on this example of poor planning in anticipating potential problems.... what awaits us when the collider is finally put to use. Also wondering is it coincidence that the collider is getting ready to put to use, and we are getting so close to year 2012?

What idiots – this project can be dereailed by a bird dropping a piece of bread – amazing – Michael

That or flat earth people are afraid it will destroy the world by a self consuming black-hole and are sabotaging it with bread missiles.

Th physicists should probably wear washable hats and coats just in case baguettes aren't the only thing birds decide to drop.

Only the truly insane would wish the Large Hadron Collider to be
successful. Their mad scientist experiments proposed border on extinction level events, meaning the earth and all within will go bye bye,
one molecule at a time or in tiny bites like pac man via the mini black holes or strangelets that could be created. Long live baguettes!
P.S. Is this just a smokescreen for the real troublemaker, located
miles below the ground in Black Hills, So. Dakota, old Homestake gold mine, the Sanford Underground Laboratory??

I don't get it. It totally flew over my head.

I'm sure the scientists will baguette about it in the morning

I can't believe they didn't protect the machinery against such an obvious security risk!

I wonder if this machine is going to destroy the entire planet with some kind of chain reaction? I guess if it does, we'll never know.

If a little bird can bring down a $10B atom smasher then Houston we have a problem. That's like claiming the space shuttle exploded after launch because it flew through a flock of birds!

Call it cosmic coincidence, or a warning from above, or whatever... but there's definitely no coincidences that it happened.

Ah well, as a resident of France I can confirm that everything stops for food here. Everything.

"god" does not want his secrets revealed

Well, I think there are plenty of birds in Europe who besides this one could add the the demise of the LHC. This is really a week story for a 10B dollar investment that a bird can take out an operations. What we need is more digging to the inability for a group of people to jump start this machine!

I worked with wild birds for 13 years. I know Blue jays that would do that!

If it is buried then how did a piece of bread fall from the sky and hit it. My science says that bread dropped from a bird will not penatrate the ground. Something doesn't sound right

If it truly was a bird, then they have even more to worry about. If the project was so poorly designed so that local wildlife has easy access, then the prospect of lost feathers and fecal matter clogging the works must be a real possibility.

Someone seems to be confusing baguettes with croissant.

Good thing it didn't crap on it.

Gee, what if it rained?

How could an experiment of this magnitude be this vulnerable?

Boy those French will do anything for attention but training a bird to disrupt the LHC is way over the top. As far as common sense and scientists go....figettaboutit!

911, Sep 11, 2009 is other made up story by somebody. many things happened that included some times UFO report that near nuclear plant, and some case war, Crop Circle, etc. this is planet Earth. America Flag was created to show what America means. that included many star system.

This is wonderful!!! Mind you, I'm sorry that such an expensive piece of equipment was damaged but – it's wonderful!!! God has such a quirky sense of humor. I'm sure he used the bird to convey a lesson to those know-it-all scientists. That for all their expertise, a simple bird and a piece of "manna" have wreaked havoc in their machine. I have this vision of Him peering down at us with a knowing smirk on his face. Oh yes – makes you want to jump up and down and clap your hands in time to the music of the heavans. (boogie-woogie?)

One thinks of those brilliant eggheads in chem/bio lab in school constantly flubbing experiments with the most boneheaded moves. I personally think this was a cover story for some geek/tech slob eating on the job and making a mess that broke the equipment.

Duh! Has anyone over there ever heard of wind? If a bird can take it out with a piece of bread, what happens when the wind blows? Why would they leave something like that unprotected?

The universe will NOT allow the creation/discovery of the Higgs partical. Make no mistake. Odd things will continue to happen here.

This is too funny..I can see the ad now. For sale, one atom smasher. Can handle all types of lightning, acids, tsunamis and space debris. Guaranteed to show how the universe may have been formed. Caution: unit is sensitive to bread dropped by birds.

Of course it didn't have chocolate filling. A baguette is the long, skinny loaf of bread that Americans think of as "French Bread." It may be that bread and pastries aren't tech enough for your tech writers, but they may have been thinking of croissants. Perhaps a croissant, with its higher fat content, would have been more electrically conductive and caused greater problems. Luckily, it was only plain bread, and the problem a mere bagatelle.

This is obviously fake. no bird droped that.

the reason they dont know who done it or what caused it. it simply comes as a surprise toe everyone there but thats what happens when you go to the unknown.

I'm just a software engineer but have to agree with suresh: if my stuff were as apparently non-robust as the LHC, I'd never code again (for pay anyway). Turn the thing on and a magnet tears loose. A bird can disable it by dropping a bit of baguette. Are we then to suppose that the results generated by this bag of bolts will hold any validity whatever?

Here is what Michael Nostradamus wrote about the coming event at the LHC in 1557 in Old French, in "Les Propheties..." (publ. Rosne, a Lyon):
IX – 44. "Migrez, migrez de Geneue trestous,
"Saturne d'or en fer se changera,
"Le contre RAY POZ exterminera tous,
"Avant l'advent le Ciel signes fera."
My translation, published in my book r. M. Nostradamus..." already in 1985 (Studeophile, Chicago, hard-cover edition) and again in 1988 (Morkunas Printing Co., Chicago, ISBN 0-933569-00-9), pp. 423-427, long before the LHC was built in Geneva, is (with my comments in parentheses):
IX – 44 "Leave, leave Geneva all!...
Saturn of gold (elements heavier than gold) will be transmuted into
iron (generation of elements by the Higg's boson):
The (target) opposite to the positive ray (RAYON POZITIF, the
accelerated protons) will exterminate all,
Before the coming (of the end) the sky will show signs."
About the generation of "a pocket universe" (another "Big Bang" within this universe) Alan H. Guth, the principal author of the inflationary theory of many universes, writes ("The Inflationary Universe", Perseus, Reading, MA, 1997, pp. 254, 263): "...a patch of false vacuum 10 exp. -26 centimeters across is all the recipe demands... the time it takes the child universe to disconnect is roughly 10 exp. -37 seconds... It would diappear in roughly 10 exp. -23 seconds [i.e., extremely rapidly], releasing the energy equivalent of a 500 kiloton nuclear explosion." A Higgs boson, if created at the LHC by the RAYON POSITIF (accelerated protons, which have positive charges), may generate a sufficiently small patch to initiate "a pocket universe." Let us hope - if it has to happen - that it will explode with only 500 kiloton energy, and not continue to expand...
All we need to see is another impact of a comet (like the one that hit Jupiter) to know that "the sky is showing signs"!...
No wonder the bird was trying to stop this from happening - by dropping a sandwich... Is it seriously possible?! Read all about it in the books I mentioned!...

Maybe there's a reason why it's not able to start up. Once it works that could be the end of the world as we know it. Could it be something or someone is sabotaging the end of our existence?

Obviously the God particle really does not want to be found!

ends are covered with plastic caps before installation. What horrific deceit blaming nature for an engineer’s mishap taking a food break while installing materials.

I caught a few pictures with crew on coffee breaks in the tunnels

10 billion dollar machine can be damaged by a bird carrying bread crumbs!!?? REALLY all those scientific minds and no one thought to close the door?

Dear CNN,

If tthe "LHC" is located underground, then, how is it possible that a bird got baguette onto the 10 billion dollar atom smasher? Also, how did said bird get the baguette to begin with? Finally, I would like to meet this crafty bird of prey.

Thank You,
Concerned Citizen

P.S. Polk High Football Rules!

Maybe the bird was trying to make toast ? Sacre Bleu !

Jeez, I hope a squirrel doesn't fart too close to it the next time they try to start it up.

This is clearly God's way of showing His sense of humor while telling these scientists that He created what they have been trying for over a year to disprove.

common sense thinking from such highly eductaed scientific folks.

Common sense and highly educated are two traits that rarely appear in the same individual.

How can such an incredible piece of equipment NOT be protected against this kind of occurrence?? What if it rains?

Hmm if a Bird could take it down, it clearly needs to be under at least a cheap metal shack or something. I mean the cost of a delay is probably more then the cost of putting everything in a cheap metal shack.

suresh: Uh... It's more likely that the construction or engineering people neglected to protect the machinery. No common sense from some readers.

How in the @#$% could a piece of bread – "naked and unfilled" – cause ANYTHING to 'short out'??!! This is utterly absurd – unless a huge group of morons designed something with voltages so high (and obviously improperly isolated) that even a typically **NON-CONDUCTING** substance was enough to trigger an arc-over or flash-over condition.

This explanation is likely BS! If it is not, then somebody/bodies associated with this program should be promptly canned before they commit another assinine action of some description, plus being this year's recipient of the 'Unbelievable Idiot' award.

Left this comment out accidentally ..

Forget the bread. It is a well known fact in the power distribution industry that birds, squirrels, etc being on adjacent high voltage power lines or contacts can in fact cause an arc over if they get too close to one another.

Air is a good dielectric insulator (particularly dry air), but if the voltage is high enough and a critter (or two) gets between two or more voltage differential points, then the dielectric quality of the remaining air gap breaks down and fireworks occur. Toasted critters – NOT BREAD, BY GOLLY!!

Tell these bozos to come up with a better explanation!

I agree with the comment about the exposed electrical equipment. They really should cover that up, haha. Tisk Tisk.

They should implement a "No food or drink" policy around the sensitive equipment. Lol

Well, it looks like we finally have a secret weapon to counter to the Iranian nuclear facility problem: birds. Why couldn't the military have come up with this on their own?

just think!!....all that power to put a black hole in time and a bird saved the world!!!...a mind is a bad thing to wast..at lest 10 billion buck's worth..thank you Bird you should get a nole bell prize for that..did i hear a ding???..

How weird.

This is a bit strange to me. A multi-billion dollar venture and no one takes the time to provide ample protection to prevent against a incident like this....

seriously...???

i'm sure they are smarter than you.

Thank god it was only a baguette and not something much more ( merde) sinister!!
God help them if it rains when its operating... they might get the big bang they were not expecting either.
It is frightening that this kind of very simple oversight can occur.
Regards,
Hodgson.

I think we have a case of some very brilliant minds who can't ever accept being wrong about anything using the instance of a bird dropping a piece of bread to cover up their own screw-ups ~_~ kinda pathetic for sure educated men.

I didn't see anything on their official pages... I must admit this sounds silly... A bird... c'mon...

What? No Butter?

Perhaps in 25 years we will all have one of these devices on our wristwatch.

In the famous of Scottie (Star Trek): "The more complicated it is, the easier it is to gum up the works."

I'm utterly dumbfounded by the depth and breadth of ignorance displayed in many of these posts. I'm very glad mankind has built the LHC, but part of me wishes they'd spent some of that $10B on education. Really. Read for comprehension. NOTHING was "brought down". There isn't a story at all here, frankly. "Had the machine been activated, it would have caused the LHC to go into shutdown mode." And if the computer in your car malfunctions – or any of 100 different parts, your car will do the same thing. It goes into shutdown mode. Mankind has made millions of cars and spent far more than $10B doing so. How many LHCs has mankind made?

Ignorant twits.

Reading through these comments leaves me with one question; How stupid can you people be? I'm not blaming you for your ignorance – particle physics is a pretty technical subject, but your outright stupidity is embarrasing.
According to the logic presented here, we should have abandoned manned flight because someone fell out of a tree and, well that's just proof that nature doesn't want us to fly. A rogue bird shutting the machine down is not a failure, it's a good thing. All machinery has safety circuitry to prevent operation when something/anything is not right. You'll note that most of you cannot put your automatic transmission in "drive" without pressing on the brakes. That's not a failure, it's intentional. Tell me, how would those of you with such great "common sense" (evidently from living so far from Paris) have set up your safety circuit to prevent the firing of a particle accelerator. Nature abhores a vaccuum. It's too bad that nature doesn't rectify the problem by filling all vaccuums with morons. Learn something about science before you comment on science articles.

jm: "These are the folks who think they are smart enough to figure out how the universe works?
Perhaps we should just leave the running of the universe to God."

I suppose you would use the same argument against such modern evils as fire, the wheel, capitalism, and antibiotics.
If we got rid of technology, that would include prying your guns from your cold, dead hands, too.

Damn you Socialist Sea Gull!

Didn't we learn anything from the terrorist attack on the Death Star?

Thank you a-mused and scott. I was beginning to lose faith in humanity.

The level of ignorance in the comments above yours was disheartening to say the least. If civilization depended on these people to advance society, there would be no idiotic remarks on news articles on the internet, since we would all still be living in caves.

At this rate, CERN won't get this machine fired up till December 21, 2012! Wait...that's not good.

This kind of reminds me the time that the U.S sent a-bombs into the atmosphere when they were testing.The scientists did not know what it would do so.Let's try it anyway.Or the multiple tests done in the Nevada desert.Where did all that radiation go?Oh ya.It only has a half life of over 100 years.Which is still lethal enough to kill.These people do not think before they test things.It's all in the name of money and how to waste it.People are out of work, no way to pay bills and buy food and these people are building redundant machines that will do nothing for us.What do they hope to accomplish with this piece of junk.If there were particles that were there but no longer around.Don't you think there is a reason they are not?We have the technology to create dinosaurs but.Should we?They are like rich kids with too many toys.They have them but don't always know what to do with them.We are all riding on the Hindenberg.There's no sense fighting for a window seat.Good luck folks.Hope you can see your butt.It might be time to say goodbye.LOL.

Maybe it will finally work on December 12, 2012?

I am unclear where readers are getting that this machine is outside...I understand that the collider is contained in a circular tunnel, with a circumference of 27 kilometres/17mi, at a depth ranging from 50 to 175 metres/160 to 570 ft underground.

Am I inaccurate or are many, many readers making assumptions because they do not know what they are talking about and have failed to do any research on the project (they just want to complain)?

I beg of you to make sure you know something about the topic before you post an unfounded 'opinion'.

Hadron Collider
(to the tune of "Sweet Molly Malone")

In Geneva's sub layers
Where the physicists made her
I first set my eyes on the Hadron Machine.
As her magnets were chilling
Physicists were thrilling
Flying protons and neutrons around a big "O".

Around a big "O",
Around a big "O",
Flying protons and neutrons around a big "O".

She was a collider
But was longer and wider
Than all the colliders that had come before,
Steering neutrons and protons
To collisions head-on.
Flying protons and neutrons around a big "O".

Around a big "O",
Around a big "O",
Flying protons and neutrons around a big "O".

She died from connections
In need of correction,
The big magnet quenched in the Hadron Machine.
So her beams both went straying
Now no one is saying
"Flying protons and neutrons around a big "O".

Around a big "O",
Around a big "O",
Flying protons and neutrons around a big "O"."

the heck.....this thing that cost 10 billoin got stalled by a piece of bread.....either it very delicate or were screwed.

Scott and a-mused, my thoughts exactly. This board shows the appalling lack of scientific education in this country. It seems that most people think the French built the entire project, it is sitting above ground in the open, and once operational, it will create a black whole that will destroy the earth because god wants to punish us. Wow, people won't even consult Wicki anymore before mouthing off.

I do not really think a black hole we create will swallow the solar system but this makes wonderful sciene fiction. Could the world have been saved by a bird? Perhaps there is still hope for us all.

Why is it that idiots feel the need to comment on things they know nothing about? I'm a physics major and I don't fully understand the equipment they are working with yet. It would be prudent to withold judgment until all the facts are known. But then again, we Americans can't seem to help our arrogance(we do know everything, after all). My point being, if you don't understand particle physics and how the equipment works, give it a rest already!!!! Or maybe you could take yourself and the rest of your 2012 cult and cement yourselves in a bunker or something. The rest of the wold will be glad to be rid of your ignorance.

Ha! A bit of baguette can take out the largest particle accelerator in the world. Talk about an Achilles' Heel!

Remember, the religious nut-cases also were against Thomas Edison wiring New York for electricity. Before you voice opinions about god being against scientific in inquiry in this case, think about how stupid you’ll look in 50 years.

Maybe we could use some TARP money to cover this?

Bird terrorist.....what next?

I'm not afraid of smashing atoms, but if a piece of bread can shut it down, what other kinds of safety precautions have they either overlooked or disregarded?

If you don't have a PhDs in physics shut up.

I do not think there is one qualified person to even comment on anything here.

Ok, it's obvious that the majority of people who have commented here have never dealt with technology and the elements. ANY time a foreign object is introduced into an electronic system it can and will cause a whole slurry of issues. Those of you criticizing because it shut down from bread being introduced should try drinking a glass of water with a wad of papertowels in it. Tell me how it works out.

As for the exposed to the elements question. Animals have a bunch of ways to gain access to indoors. Birds are the biggest criminals out there (breaking and entering). Sometimes they are small enough to just squeeze through a pretty small hole.

Think before you speak. You just might sound like you don't know what you're talking about.

Bible Thumpers – Enough already! There is no god, no one is watching over us and your black book of lies is useless! Can't wait for them to fire up the LHC!

Perhaps what blows my mind the most about the "God doesn't want us to unlock the secret" comments is this nugget;

Do you people *really* think that an infinitely wise, infinitely knowing God has created something so simple that mere men are going to figure it all out with this machine? Really? Are you freaking kidding me? Is your faith, upbringing, teaching, and theological understanding so thin? I believe in God. I believe in Man. I believe that God allows us to continually expand our potential to understand more of that which He has created. But never would I be so egotistical as a mortal to conceive for a second that anything we could build would unravel that which He has created. If the LHC leads us to better understand how the universe functions, it could lead to us solving energy – and as a side effect – poverty problems. The upsides are many, the downsides are hype, hyperbole, and fiction.

Now then, can we all please engage our brains and have an intelligent discussion rather than knee-jerk, inane babbling on the subject?

I just love how you people think that no one understands the forces they are studying, and how the universe might blow up if a bird drops a crumb.
Samples:"he project was so poorly designed so that local wildlife has easy access" – ever seen a squirrel short out a transformer?
"from what i hear they are trying to make anti-matter" -was it Sarah Palin who told you that?
And my favorite:"No common sense thinking from such highly eductaed scientific folks."
You all need to get an "eductation," I guess. Or maybe a nice hot cup of STFU.

My local newspaper says we're having a hurricane because God is angry about us shooting His Moon. So I went out last night and mooned Him back.

Murpie's Law.... LOL

It was not a bit of baguette. According to the official bulletin, they mention a "a baguette bread":

http://user.web.cern.ch/user/news/2009/091106b.html

Must have been a huge bird.

Ahhh, such vitriol. The point is that this machine has proven yet again that it does not shut down gracefully. If trivial things, such as hungry birds, can shut it down, then what are the odds of it getting up-and-running and then staying running?

Raising the questions of this project being too ambitious, too complex, or just plain too expensive are all very reasonable. If no one can know that it was designed, engineered, and constructed correctly.... then no one can know what the results of any of the experiments means.

The next time you engage in a discussion of science, religion, and faith, ask yourself who has the most blind-faith: a fundamentalist Christian (or Muslim) or a scientist working on this project?
The scientist is relying on faith and belief in dozens or hundreds of other people, not first-hand observation. Who is to say what the religious person has experienced or observed first-hand?

I'm a scientist myself, but I see, and hear, too many that claim to be scientists that fail to realize how much they accept purely on faith. Yet, they don't just criticize those that profess faith, they viciously attack. They blindly worship their own faith-based religion of science and don’t see that they have abandoned reason. They have become as irrational as they claim the fundamentalists to be.

Snooty – why? I was thinking the same thing. If it's outdoors why isn't it protected more? Surely someoned must have consdidered birds or other debris if the equipment is that sensitive.

I'll go with Scott and a-mused on this. Its amazing how much "wasted text" i have read thru.

On another note, i read on CNN a few weeks back that not a lot of people (like 20-30% max) have sufficient understanding to read scientific news that you would find in a news paper (or the net). Heres a good example.

To add to Scott's statement, you computers are also built like the LHC. They are meant to fail in a secure way if theres something that goes wrong, thats the lovely bleu screen you see (also called BSOD). You WANT and NEED that to happen. With a project like the LHC you REALLY want&need that.

I dont get why people dont want to understand the goal of projects before playing the critic. They may uncover really cool stuff about where we come from, life or just ("just") how the universe works. I mean, i'd like to know...

We did send someone to the moon or space and we did lose money and people. but that gave us satelites, telecom, GPS, cells, good TV...

If you dont get it, let people who do get it, work at it

@ChasnMD

Ah Yes, I'm sure sending a probe millions of miles into space and accurately hiting a moving object is a very simple thing for you.

TKOLAT,
I think Scottie actual said
The more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain

If my memory is correct, a bird or something shut down the whole power grid on the east coast a few years ago.

A warning from God
Do not poke the Gad particles with Large Hadrons

This wonder of technology is the sexiest thing on the planet. Just switch the 'd' and the 'r' in Hadron and you'll see what I mean. Coincidence? I think not...

Ummmm SNOOTY – - - when has that EVER stopped ANYONE?!?! Look at all the people who could solve every problem our country has ever had in UNDER a year if they could only get off their keyboards long enough to do anything but complain.........

After reading all of these I came to the conclusion it was really the testing of a fail safe device in case a black hole got out of conrol.

Just send in a few birds carrying loaf of bread, kinda like lead rods.
A magic shut down.

It must be a sign from god, were all going to die if they go thru with the experiment... lol

I have serious doubts about the veracity of this story. It does not seem to be sourced particularly well.

sorry to disappoint the US – friends there .. but that thing is mostly paid for by the German tax payer

If every single setback in the history of technological advances were seen as "divine intervention," then I imagine all you idiots would have a heck of a hard time reading this since God didn't want us to have the light bulb. It was only after Edison offered a sacrifice to Satan that the kinks finally worked themselves out, right??? Give me a break, nutjobs.

One thing is certain: the probability that they will ensure that all electronic components are in enclosures and that those enclosures are properly sealed when not being worked on has increased.

I think they should do something to cover the machine

Seriously, I cannot even begin to comprehend the level of ignorance here. A black hole requires enormous amounts of mass to survive. Without that mass, the black hole is basically a blip in space-time. If it forms, it will ultimately collapse under its own specific volume. It's not going to devour the earth.

As far as the higgs-boson is concerned, they are trying to basically isolate the particle so that it can be observed. If that is the case, our understanding of particle physics will take a huge leap forward.

And for the people invoking the wrath of god for this, don't you think that's a little silly? Yet another god paradox, if you ask me.

Really!!! They didn't learned nothing from the Death Star on Star Wars. You have to cover your exhaust port, people!!!

BTW Congrats you sorry excuses for scientists. Guess your LHC is only a Large Heap of Crap. Have some dignity and end this miserable fail. You should even be on the same occupation as the people that have come to help us understand the world we live in and have teach us to live in harmony with it, Not destroying or playing god. Awww!!! that's what you wanted to be when you grew up, CERN...

RE-Post to Correct spelling errors:
To all of you who have made disparaging comments on this story grow up. The boundaries of science would never be pushed if it were up to Neanderthals like you. That's the problem with America too many people don't like science but they love science fiction. For all you who disparage this magnificent machine and don't care taht we've made leaps forward in areas of science, go ahead and give back every device you have that uses electricity, was made with electricity, or lies in any part upon electricity, because it was the study of physics, namely quantum mechanics, that made all these things possible for you. If you're too scared to look into the void of space and try to find where we really came from them put you head back in the ground and shut up. Some people are trying to do real scientific work here.

The degree of cynicism and " Haa...I told you the scientist were just as dumb as the rest of us" being blurted out here is just plain sad, yet expected. We should take a step back an look at ourselves. We truly do wish for the mediocrity of others. We seek out the failure of others in order to make ourselves feel better. Maybe it is our destiny to bring on our own demise. Or maybe we should have stifled innovation long ago. All we really need is meat, weapons, violence, grunting and the Gods right?

This group of commenter’s are not smart enough to realize that the ignorance they spew reads like a comic book. You would have everybody sit on the floor and twiddle there thumbs till life has left the uneventful lives. You morons should commit on something you know something about. Anything!!!!! Perhaps your @$$ is getting sore from sitting on the floor. hahaha in your world chairs are to dangerous and high tech. Oh wait you used a computer. Aren't you scared of that piece of high tech? I bet you even second guess your doctor too, those high blood pressure pill don't do you any good might as well stop taking them....
You are the problem not the solution!

African or European Sparrow?

The machine will surely work someday. I don't think that God will sabotage it. If the God is Godly, IT will be very happy see that ITs best creation is even thinking of catching upto IT. I think God is just testing us to see if we stay the course against all odds (ref: many of the comments).

Wow,
I'm reading these postings and I cannot believe this is the general population speaking. You all sound like little kids! I wonder who in this blog is educated in science and technology. Obviously this article is poorly written and does not explain the nature of the failure. I actually find it amazing that this team found a "bread crumb" in this MASSIVE machine. THAT is risk assessment. And for all of you people bashing Europe, what don't you look at yourself in this uneducated, ignorant, and obesse American populus. You people make me feel embarrased for my own country. Go back to believing ark tales and 2012 conspiracies. I'll see you in January 2013; by then, you'll probably have a new "dooms day" theory.

I have more faith in the scientists even if it was a simple oversight then in the media it was presented with.

All I can say is AFLAC

The bird that saved the world

Why do some people feel the need to cast their religious/political drivel on top of science? If this type of crap thinking would have overtaken science historically, you would not have the personal computer you have today (which you wisely use to smear your nonsense propaganda on the internet).

There once was an early gigantic, expensive, unstable, flimsy, yet cutting edge computer. It existed at a time when there was famine, jobless, etc... The US government funded it anyway, even after a creature of 'your god,' a moth (suspected of creating the term "computer bug"), got into a relay and brought the machine to it's knees. Should we have looked at that as a sign of divine intervention? I don't really hear anybody talking about how computer research should have stopped after such a clear sign from "God" that all attempts to fix it should be abandoned, or else. No, in fact that spending at a time when the money could have been used to feed people has created millions of IT jobs, changed the face of our world, advanced the technology you like to shun in the name of your wonderful "god," and oh, provided you with a medium with which to continue your vain attempts at halting our progress by fearmongering and end-of-world prophesizing.

And thinking of those millions upon millions of IT jobs, I need to get back to work so you morons can use the IT I help provide to continue crying about unemployment, how health care needs to be socialized, how the government needs to be feeding the hungry instead of investing in technology, etc... You know, if America goes the way your type seems to want, we're going to turn into the very socialist state that gets ridiculed in the preceding comments; France.

This sounds like a TOTAL HOAX.

What's with all the god references anyway? Why is it that the religious always want us to remain ignorant about our own world and the universe? I know, because TRUTH DENIES FAITH. And FAITH is the source of their CONTROL and POWER over the minions. I'd rather know the truth and be fully clothed than naked and ignorant (and wandering around in some boring garden) like they want us to be.

A time travel event sent from our future to stop the LHC dead in it's tracks. This is no joke.

I wonder what happens when the rats start gnawing at the cables?

i cant belive a 10 billon dollar atom smasher was shut down due to a bread

God hasn't sabotaged it, but life has a way of making us eat humble pie every now and then. This must be a government run project.

the bread looked like mc hammers pants haha cant touch this

Maybe we can use it to bring back Chief Inspector Clueso to solve the mystery of which came first – the bird or the bread...

Jeeze, some folks believe everything that's shown, said or printed in the media.

The comments by a-mused seem to me reasonable and logical. It is a hype to call the Higgs boson they are trying to produce at the LHC "the God's particle." Actually the Higgs fields (proposed by Petr W. Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland) provide two as yet undiscovered particles: the Higgs boson with the energy of about 1000 GeV (giga electron volts), equal to 1 TeV (tera electron volt, equal to 10 exp. 12 electron volts), and another Higgs particle in the vicinity 10 exp. 16 GeV (or 10 exp. 13 TeV), sometimes called the higgsino of the grand unification theory of supersymmetry (SUSY GUT; for details, cf. Alan H. Guth, "The Inflationary Universe", Perseus, Reading, MA, 1997, pp. 122-139). There is no chance to produce the higgsino (for the unification of the electromagnetic, the weak, and the strong forces) because of the lack of such energy, but only the relatively feeble Higgs boson at 1 Tev or just a little higher energy. The mass of a proton (not accelerated) corresponds to 0.938 GeV; of a neutron, 0.940 GeV. However, the LHC just might produce a shower of particles unexpectedly, if a single, artiificially produced Higgs boson would have this property. Even if a "pocket universe" would be produced (which is a remote possiblity), its vanishing would cause just a local explosion (according to Guth, 500 kilotons, see my earlier comment; "only" 17 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb). That is why is is possible to escape just by leaving Geneva, according to Nostradamus. Perhaps this is what Nostradamus had in mind, when he wrote in 1557 about the transmutation of elements at Geneva (gold to iron) followed by a disaster (verse IX-44).

.....can it make toast??

Aww, come on... I thought to TARP bit was pretty funny.

I think everyone is missing it here. These really are brilliant men. They found a way to make themselves rich and get paid for doing nothing. They claim to come up with all this, pay very little for shoddy technology that looks cool. They keep finding reasons to say it doesn't work. There are only two problems. 1. What happens when people get tired of it not working and can them all. 2. Also that the scientists do not have enough common sense to make up believable errors. No they can't have a miscalculation or a power surge or something else believable.......a bird cooks its dinner on some wires.......

a-mused writes...
"I'm utterly dumbfounded by the depth and breadth of ignorance displayed in many of these posts.
[snip] And if the computer in your car malfunctions – or any of 100 different parts, your car will do the same thing. It goes into shutdown mode. Mankind has made millions of cars and spent far more than $10B doing so."

You know, for someone awfully high up on that horse of yours, you ought to do about 2 minutes research before commenting. Few, if any, modern cars will 'shutdown' due to a simple sensor, or connection, fault. That's why you have that little light on the dashboard, you know, the one that looks like an engine? Even a significant failure will probably only force you into "limp-home" mode, where the engine is de-tuned on-the-fly to prevent further damage without stranding you on the roadside.

I hope the depth your own ignorance gets a little shallower before your next try.

There also worried it may cause more CROP CIRCLES
BUT in any regard;not many people realize the ORIGINAL COLLIDER(in Illinois USA)is in a competition to see who finds it first.The last i heard America will get their FIRST & sofar no problems with ours in America...OLd Europe will always shoot themselves in the foot

Okay, I believe in God. But I can't believe he places a high value on ignorance. Must've been disappointed when the Middle Ages drew to an end? Personally, I'm inclined to think he appreciates in some way our curiosity about, and appreciation of, the marvels of the structure of the universe. That is, I like to think God is a pretty "reasonable guy" (we WERE gifted with that cerebrum after all). – Oh, and it's been said many times already, but there are MUCH more energetic particles continuously zipping around our solar system than anything the LHC will be able to crank out and I haven't noticed any planets or such being sucked into local black holes recently.

I think they should stop the project. It is obviously not supposed to happen since all of these mishaps continue occuring. Why do the scientists need to create a catastrophy before they realize this was a mistake. I hope we are all still around afterwards to clean up the mess they are making. WAY TO GO BIRD!!

Sounds like" baguettage" to me.

i would like to know who approves tax money for such a project thats dedicated to failure. we wander why the economy is broke. do you put a TV that can be damaged with rain outdoors. NO than why put the most complexed machine that the biggest idiots of the world made to be damaged by a crumb. how stupid do they feel now. quit spending my tax dollars on useless stuff and put it to use. fix the streets and buy stuff everyone can prosper off of. i feel us people of the USA need to come together and not take this anymore. its gone way to far. we spend way to much on ignorant projects with a gaurenteed failure rate. as long as we sit here and do nothing they (government) will continur to spend our money like this!

i dont know whats more worrisome (cue the scary music) the "gods" didnt REALLY want us to discover the magic secrets of the universe religio-crazies slash paranoids who watch too much x-files drivel and think a "blach hole" 99% of them couldnt define in cosmological terms with a gun to their heads is gonna swallow us all up if we poke the sleeping monster or the "common-sense" rednecks from texas with their years of drunken backyard mechanics expertise and end less supply of duct tape acting as if they understand anything more complicated than a 12vdc car battery system (if that) let alone a machine with multiple distribution transformer stations, switching equipment and SCADA type systems to coordinate the sequential firing of a series of supermagnets that are necessarily distributed over a 75 sq mile area (do the math) to accelerate these particles to the speeds necessary to produce the required collision energies.
if any of you could find your way around a power plant, an electrical distribution utility or even an installation with a stand-by generator bigger than your brain (ie very small) then maybe you're qualified to comment about the design, operation, maintenance or wisdom of an important (highly distributed) machine like this one, otherwise stay in your comfort (twilight) zone else you show your ignorance to the whole world, reinforcing the stereotype of the ugly (and dumb) american.

Worlds biggest and most expensive toaster.

Maybe that's just how the bird rolls..

What's next? Minocs chewing on the power cables?

Come on. If the future really wanted to stop the LHC from being made, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

That bird is a terrorist!!! I sure hope they brought it to justice.

No the amazing Obama Adiministration isnt running it an neither is that Vampire wth a shrivled black Heart DICK cheney or his Puppet G.W. But what do you expect frm the French,I didnt think the Swiss would be as carless. I juts wonder what Black Projects they will be working on. This thing should be scrapped.
Dick Cheney is the worst VP since Nixon's boy Spiro, oh I forgot that idiot Rumsfeld an Cheney were part of that AMAZING ADMINISTRATION that stole the election an let 9/11 happen, they were the worst thing to happen to this country since the Great Depression. An we have a huge deficit now, mainly because of them. The sooner Cheney dies the btr, hes as corrupt as they come, id luv to see what Big Bussiness guys an other people he met most during his time in Office. If I ever see him ill do what I can to botch slap him or toss some kind of Vegtables on him Medieval Style.

~QQ~ Maybe all the blackholes in the universe were created by past civilizations that built a similar particle accelerator.

Wow, looks like we know where to find all the tin-foil hat wearing morons of the world! They are right here trying to comprehend scientific concepts FAR, FAR beyond their 2'nd grade education level, and then commenting on them with magical tales of black holes and anti-matter and 2012 and God not wanting us to know his secrets and time traveling birds coming from the future to stop the LHC!!!

If these people represent the bulk of the U.S. population, we really are doomed by this plague of stupidity.

I don't know how many times this has to be said before these people get it through their heads. The LHC will not destroy the world, no chance. Higher energy particle collisions happen all day every day when particles from the sun impact our atmosphere. The only difference is that with this machine we can WATCH the collision and learn what's happening. Nothing new is being created, it's just being observed for the first time because it's a (say it together now!) CONTROLLED EXPERIMENT!

One last thing to those people crying over how expensive this machine was to build (keep in mind it's one of, if not THE, largest and most complex machines ever built by humans!). 10 billion dollars is NOTHING! That's the cost of 10 B-2 bombers. As far as I'm concerned this machine was a great bargain when you consider that the knowledge gained could be incalculable. And I for one am glad it was built by the Europeans. Just think, if Haliburton or KBR or some other US government contractor had built it, we would have easily spent $100 Billion or more. Not to mention it probably would have electricuted a few scientists and workers as well.

The biggest minds in the world must have likely been too narrow-minded to miss such simple eventualities indeed – even ignoring the ultimate designer and controller of this humongous ecosystem where in from a – zz...

News update: Apparently the bird was trained by scientists in a rival country and was on a covert mission to sabotage this experiement. A baguette was purposely chosen so that it would look as if its the french who were behind the incident...originally it was supposed to have carried Hummus and Pita bread but that would be a dead give-away. However, the bird has been taken into custody and a cache of assorted items like baguette, italian bread, Indian Naans etc have been recovered from its hideout in a nearby tree. Police are looking for its accomplices who are supposed to be carrying "French Fries" and "bruschettas" too.

How funny that a silly bird carrying some bread can stop a machine. Very funny. I think some people are taking this all too seriously. Quoting Nostradamus (which BTW if you're a religious person is against the Bible) and then some saying it's God.
In my opinion it is just a very funny coincidence. But that is scientists for you, they get caught up in the complicated details and tend to forget about simplistic common ones.

It has to be a terrorist bird.. Gotta be.. They had better get Clouseau on it..Only the Pink Panther can solve this dilemma

Perhaps we should consider the symbolism of the bird and the bread with respect to Christianity. I just have this gut feeling that we are meddling in something that isn't meant for us to explore. I hope to God I'm wrong and that it's just a concidence.

It takes HUGE amounts of energy to sustain a black hole - even a super-tiny one. If the LHC does indeed succeed in creating one, it will by necessity be short-lived because it can't suck in mass fast enough to sustain itself. An atom at a time ain't gonna cut it. So, not to worry, the universe won't be destroyed. And, oh, by the way, electricity is safe, despite the antics of Thomas Edison as he traveled the country electrocuting cows in an attempt to discredit Nichola Tesla's power transmission system (alternating current), upon which all world power grids are now based.

Someone from the future is going back in time to sabotage (or baguettage) the LHC.

As one who recently has been "activated" into communication with the divine matrix, God, or whatever you interpret it as, on my 46th birthday; my blood circulation system has opened up and allowed me to see a hologram of Jesus flow into my heart from in front of my eyes, three dimensional pictures of the "feathered serpent" on and around my body, the divine feminine, Isis, a Mayan calendar disk, stars, planets, a replay of Adam and Eve, the list goes on and on. I new nothing about the Mayan history 6 months ago. As this continued to happen I started researching and found that our planet will begin to realize our ability to live extremely long lives, possibly etermal life by or around 2012. I feel like the aging process has stopped (seems to have reversed) and I am able to continue clearing the blood vessels in my body which stops the aging process. All of this relates to the folks who have 11:11 experiences, "awakening" experiences, 2012, meditation, etc... The cycle has to run its course along with the bread incident with this huge machine. For me, I have learned more in 6 months than in my entire life. So I'll continue with my cosmic awakening until I can significantly improve the lives of others with this new knowledge. (By the way, 2012 is about the 2nd coming of Christ and incredibly wonderful things for those who worry about what is happening to the world right now.)

A computer breaks down if you get a single drop of water in the circuit...

And a bible becomes useless after a cup of coffee...

Not to bash anyone, but better use your head before posting. It'll make you look smarter. (And probably sound smarter, too.)

(Anyways, back on topic.)

Having a bird accidentally drop a piece of bread (or any kind of food, for that matter) into an outdoor machinery is not far-fetched. Small animals have been known – and observed – to make nests in most facilities with access to the outside world. You seem to have forgotten that power outages in big cities are often caused by... squirrels getting fried in power converter boxes. Why? It was trying to find a place to sleep because there aren't trees big enough for a burrow to form.

And it doesn't even have to be the machine itself that becomes vulnerable – an external power supply becomes short-circuited by a slight thunderstorm will result in the entire facility being put into maintenance mode. No one wants to run a computer in a humid room, and the same goes for any large machinery that's based on solid-state electronics. It wouldn't cost $10bn to fix it, more likely only a couple hundred bucks to get it back online again.

And – sorry, zealots of the cross – fanaticism gets your arguments nowhere. No evidence, no argument.

aahh ignorance.
I love how people assume that machines are strong, sturdy, and impervious to something as simple as bread. We also don't know how it got in. Maybe someone was working on the outside machine and it got dropped in.
All I know is that I can touch a computer and make it worthless. This thing is FAR more complex then a computer.

Keep that in mind.

UPDATE:

The offending baguette has tranformed into a giant mutant, rivalling japan's godzilla in its planned conquest of london.

So lets see, we're in a time line which is leading to say, the collider firing up, however, those in the future, in our time line, are trying to stop us.Hmm, so this event has already happened ? Curious. So basically, if this line of logic is followed, then there is a future. They succeed in stopping the cataclysm and we have nothing to worry about.Duh! Or, if we are headed for certain doom, then we all perish and there is no future for anyone to send back warnings or to stop us.
Unless there is a convenient "other" dimension which has a way of seeing across to our dimension or "other" timeline and stopping us from doing what they avoided....that seems to be a lot of supposition and speculation.
As to the "bird" nonsense, ever seen a Sea Eagle catch a fish from the sea?, he has a huge wingspan and can barely fly away if the fish is big enough. A small bird I doubt very much could even pick up a Baguette let alone fly off with it, more likely this is a cover story for a clumsy worker leaving his lunch or worse either deliberately or not who knows?

Surprisingly, most of the observatories (perhaps including the hubble) with the most expensive and sensitive equipment are vulnerable to debris and related shutdowns and repairs.

To all scientist and engineers: THANKS for being persistent in your faith! To all non-scientist and engineers thanks for challenging all scientist and engineers to become even wiser through your support; both positive and negative! This chaotic process formulates a wealth of knowledge and wisdom. As the most faithful of us (he who laid down his life for us through what he believed) prophesied: “The rich will become richer and the poor will become poorer”. This holds even with knowledge and wisdom, which is the consequence of the natural law – that we reap what we have sown and usually many times over. Be not afraid, but let the fear mongers be aware of the rewards for their endeavors, for these rewards will come from where you are not aware; just as much new knowledge comes in a surprising manner. Remember, even children hear you ranting!

I have a bad feeling about this project!!!!

Love to see this kind of forum for clueless people to comment on their lack of understanding and general negativity about anything that is more complicated than eating and breathing. It's a real testiment to the progress in technology though that these same people can actually get a computer turned on, read an article, and somehow even figure out how to make a comment on it. As Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating!".

does this mean there is a new form of "Bio" Terrorism? and all it takes to shut down an operation like this is a piece of bread?
I remember when it took James Bond a full length of a movie to do that.

I agree with others, expensive as it is, and potentially dangerous, don't you think it would be underground? Protected.

I don't set my computer outside with the case wide open and hope it doesn't rain while I"m trying to find the meaning of the universe.

Mr. Hillman. I respect your reply.

Humans have made more than one vehicle and I can assure you from firsthand experience, the earlier vehicles outfitted with EFC/EFI and/or EMC did, in fact, shut down based on any number or combination of bad sensors, data, etc. "Limp home" mode was subsequent generations.

If you'd like to insist upon some alternative reality, that's fine as well. I'm not sure I'd want a $10B machine to "limp home". First, any secondary damage is going to be arguably a bit more expensive than the majority of parts for a ca and second, the tow back to a repair shop would be horrifically expensive if it were to break in "limp home" mode.

People always fear what they do not know. Before cars came out, they were death machines on wheels. Come on people get ahold of yourself. That being said, I have no idea why this is news yet, nothing happened and nothing was ruined.

For all those who say we should fight food and starvation, etc, etc, you are surely blind. Better yet, lets not push any limits of science and technology, that way we don't have any inovation like cellphones and satellite TV, some things that people can not live without anymore.

That's what she said

The funny part is the thinking that this device could create a black hole that would swallow the entire univ

Linda (10:19)

Uh, Linda, ah, you wouldn't by chance have any more buttons of that laying around, would you?

Just asking.

Way to go God!.... teehee

Wow, hopefully non of the local flying fauna will have to take a dump. Maybe just park a bunch of Renaults around, they make better targets.

It's a sign from the Powers from Above that this experiment should not take place.

Was this bird interrogated at Guantanamo Bay? Hi might just be a Mulsim terrorist... Can you waterboard a bird?

Was it a European or African swallow?

Nothing to worry about. These guys will not make black holes here on earth. They can't even deal with bread crumbs

Where is Dr Who when the world needs him????

For all of you out there that think this is "playing god", dangerous, or a waste of money please try to learn a little science. You sound like fools.

All of you superstitious people get so freaked out over the LHC. Need you forget that NASA's space program is plagued by a multitude of problems and it isn't God telling them not to fly into space. It is simply a complex program with complex machinery.

Besides, we've flow to the clouds and flown to the "heavens" and found no God no pearly gates no angels...nothing but space!

The LHC will find no God and will find no heavens. It will simply find an architectural origin.

I think if IT would find anything they would keep it COVERED-UP.WOULDN'T IT BE FUNNY IF IT CREATED A HUGE "SMILY-FACE CROP CIRCLE.;-O....Then the'll make a REMAKE OF THE MOVIE THE "CHINA SYNDROME"...;-(........AND WAKE-UP THE CHINESE.;-)

what if a panini fell into the "HC". I think we are on to something. Screw particles. The secret of life is "THE BAGUETTE" . Was there butter on "the Baquette", or was it dry. That will piss me off if it was dry.
Can we trace where the baguette came from. perhaps "olive garden". I blame "Olive Garden". On a serious note. THe "HC", should be changed to "The Baguette Collider". Thank You...

i am going to invent an "baquette dectector taker awayer". Once that is complete, higgs bosom or whatever, will be ready to his collide on.

A thought to ponder:

If the comments on this board are anything to go by, would a black-hole swallowing this planet up really be a bad thing?

I can't even SAY "waterboard a bird" – ten times fast.

Must've gripped the baguette by the "husk".

Actually the equipment that failed last year was made in USA, although this is not a very popular statment to be heard by you. The tunnel where the equipment is instaled is enormous; is almost imposible to seal it against birds since continuously it must allow for human maintenance workers, scientist, big pieces of equipment, etc.

Looks like the design scientists are few slices shy of a loaf.

Thank you Rich, I am so sick of hearing people make idiotic broad brush statements about "god" not wanting this to happen. If you are going to comment on something like this please check your fairy tales at the door.

Maybe they should build a super baguette collider above it to break the pieces of bread into tiny particles that won't damage the electronics. My guess is the whole thing is smoke and mirrors and somebody ran off with the 10 billion dollars and what is there is only for show and never intended to actually work. There will be an endless string of excuses why it can't be started until the project is dropped.

I truly wish Douglas Adams was alive to see this. . . he couldn't have written it any better!

does anyone actually believe a bird took this machine down? Or did they perform a test and somehow broke the machine. Or any other less silly explanation I would believe over a bird dropping bread somehow on it... whatever...

I used to think that we were intelligent enough as a species to be able to try to understand the secrets of the Universe, but after reading most of the comments on this thread, I've changed my mind.

Sounds like burnt toast to me.

The sheer ignorance on display here would be fascinating if it weren't coming from real people. The machine is located UNDERGROUND. The bird was able to get in. It's not air tight people. Also, yes a bread crumb can cause a problem on such a machine. This isn't your Ford Pinto here. There is precision at work. I see the humor in it, but the notion that this incident means it's a failure or shouldn't be run is ludicrous.

*** If it wasn't damaged and nothing happened why report it?!? ***

So assorted imbeciles here who couldn't pass middle-school earth science, or set the correct time on their DVD player to save their lives can make stupid comments, apparently.

Well we are advancing. one of the earliest computers was shut down by a large moth. Now it takes a bird doing a bombing run.

It'd second what Rich said above. Frankly it's depressing to read one stupid comment after another. None of you people with "common sense" have any idea about the nature of the incident, or know anything about how complex this thing is, or have any appreciation about how science works and what it takes to bring new ideas to life. If it wasn't for these "geeks" and their "wasteful" experiments you'd all still be sitting in a cold dark cave fighting over a crumb of bread.

Someone said a piece of bread cannot cause a short. That's not true. When you are dealing with millions of volts of electricity, even several inches of rubber will conduct the power.... so the more power you play with the more careful you have to be.

Find something else to invest in. If every place had a solar panel on it, it'd sure help the energy crisis, spend the billions on helping people afford that instead. I'd like to know secrets too but obviously this thing is to sensitive for the technology we have.

These are some funny comments. But actually the fact that the machine shut down–from a non-conformal event–should be at least considered smart. It shows it will shutdown if anything out of spec occurs which in my mind is a good thing.

While it is nice to laugh at the circumstance( and did I laugh) THE greater picture is that the machine behaved as it was suppose to.

The scale of interference is irrelevant, be it a bomb or a plane or (laughably) a piece of bread dropping "outdoor machinery" that is certainly better than the device ignoring anomalies altogether.

Also a machine can't discern threats of scale only that if whatever it was design to do if that function is hindered by anything its reaction (for safety reasons) is to simply not perform. The only expense is human desire to get on with the experiment, which is frustrating, costly and time consuming.

I'm surprised actually any engineer on here would consider LHC behavior as short sight on designers part.

Eye Thought – minor correction. The machine wasn't running at the time, so it was not shut down by the event. The original (non-event) article states that if the machine *were* running, it would have brought into shutdown mode.

That's the really funny part here. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Granted, we did get to observe Ranticus nutbagii in their native habitat, in a frenzied state. That's always good for a laugh. Ok, so it's more of a pity giggle, but still.

Are they sure it wasn't Homer Simpson?

a-mused--Yep just re-read the article. (tumble weed blows by)

Nothing happened.

This is is right up there with those science shows detailing how the earth will be destroyed and the narrator says "oh nothing will actually happen for 5 billion years."

-And in other news the NY Yankees could possibly reach 30 World Series Titles.

AFTER ALL IS SAID & DONE...AS ABOVE COMMENTS^..WE ARE ALL "JUST" ANIMALS...AND POTIENTIAL STAND UP COMEDIANS.NO ONE IS SERIOUS HERE!....THIS is a serious machine & the euros know how to step in it.He! He!

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha

C'mon, people, nobody really believes the search for the Higgs boson constitutes a imminent threat to the universe. Or that it's useless science. Quite the contrary. As Jacob Bronowski has said, "Physics in the twentieth century is an immortal work."

It's just that, with all the dour literalists out there, all you have to do is begin a simple declarative sentence like "This is clearly God's way of showing ..." and it's like poking a Tasmanian Devil with a stick.

Who wouldn't enjoy that?

It is the Large Hadron Collider that failed at a previous startup
not the one in America. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN, Geneva suffered light damage on September 19, 2008 when one of the giant superconducting magnets that guide the protons failed during a test. A large amount of helium, which is used to cool the magnets to 1.9 Kelvin (-271C; -456F) leaked into the collider tunnel. Several mishaps, including the failure of a 30 ton electrical transformer, have slowed LHC's progress since the initial start-up on September 10, 2008. The laboratory said in a statement that an electrical connection between the magnets had melted because of the high The laboratory said in a statement that an electrical connection between the magnets had melted because of the high current. And so it goes. A few billion down the drain and for what
higher purpose!

If it wasn't damaged and nothing happened then why report it? Well apparently most of those who have heard about this incident, did not read the Time Magazine article regarding this matter.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1937370,00.html

An excerpt is here:

Sometime on Nov. 3, the supercooled magnets in sector 81 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), outside Geneva, began to dangerously overheat. Scientists rushed to diagnose the problem, since the particle accelerator has to maintain a temperature colder than deep space in order to work. The culprit? "A bit of baguette," says Mike Lamont of the control center of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built and maintains the LHC. Apparently, a passing bird may have dropped the chunk of bread on an electrical substation above the accelerator, causing a power cut. The baguette was removed, power to the cryogenic system was restored and within a few days the magnets returned to their supercool temperatures.

"BEGAN TO DANGEROUSLY OVERHEAT."

What exactly would the outcome be if it dangerously overheated
and power to the cryogenic system could not be restored??

What is being done to prevent such simplistic interference
of nature or man from happening again?

Will it ever do its Job of Smashing Atoms.

I want this thing to work. Because it would drown out the people thinking it would cause a Black Hole that would kill us all.

This thing is really cool. I would love to work there.

Ummm...Snooty (appropriate name, I might add):

I don't think you have to be a rocket scientist to realize that highly sensitive equipment should be built to withstand being hit by a piece of bread.

In the unlikely event that there is a god then this must be his way of saying "You idiots, what have I told you about dividing by zero?!"

seems to me that if a bird carrying bread could halt a process years in the making and worth millions of dollars then maybe we are overlooking a slight security issue...

I do not understand why for so many brilliant, visionary people gathered to build this humongous machine and station, but no one have foreseen this simple incident. I mean where is their vision? Somebody should have thought that those exposed electrical components could potentially cause big problems and should have done something about it.
In other simple words, I doubt very much if these "scientists" really know that they are doing.

bernadine,

If you have such doubts, you're obviously as, if not more, well informed than the scientists and engineers behind the LHC. Please, without delay, dial them and demand to be hired so you may fix these "simple" incidents.