Oh crumbs! Hadron Collider breaks down because a passing bird dropped bread on it



It's one of the most expensive and technologically-complex machines in the world, but that didn't prevent the Large Hadron Collider from coming a cropper thanks to our feathered friends.

The £4.4 billion 'God Machine' overheated after a passing bird dropped a piece of bread into a high voltage installation which was powering a cooling unit.

Scientists looking into a failure of the cryogenic cooling plant found a piece of baguette had caused the malfunction.

Out of action: The Large Hadron Collider, buried 100m underground, has suffered a series of setbacks since it was first switched on last year

The problem was noticed by enthusiasts who were online monitoring data online and noticed unusual temperature changes.

It's not the first setback for the Collider, buried 100m underground near Geneva, Switzerland.



The mighty machine was switched on last year in an effort to unlock the secrets of the origin of the universe, but broke down within days due to a leak of helium.

The LHC attempts to recreate conditions at the time of the Big Bang by firing protons round its 16.8 mile tunnel at almost the speed of light to smash them into each other.

Daily bread: Scientists believe the troublesome baguette which caused the machine to overheat was dropped by a passing bird

There was concern at the time of its launch last year that the device's experiments could inadvertently bring about the end of the world.

Scientists say that had the machine been fully operational the results could have caused a problem similar to the catastrophic breakdown suffered by the particle accelerator last year, which led to it being out of action for 14 months.







Scientists say that the machine would have automatically shut down this time, however, leading to minimal disruption.

The series of technical glitches the LHC has suffered has resulted in some members of the scientific world speculating the machine is being sabotaged - by itself.

Some physicists have said that time-travelling particles from the future could be damaging the machine in an attempt to thwart any experiments.

