Bird Foils Big Bang

Ok, this is a little scary - the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, the multi-billion dollar science experiment that is suppose to simulate the conditions of the Big Bang was brought to a screeching halt this week by a bird, specifically a bird that dropped "a bit of baguette" into the works.

According to officials at the LHC, a bird snacking on a piece of bread at one of the machine's capacitors caused a temperature spike that caused the LHC to shut down. The LHC uses 16 miles of supercooled tubing to accelerate hydrogen atoms to nearly the speed of light before smashing them into each other in an attempt to create sub-atomic particles.

I guess it's a good thing that the machine shut itself down when it detected a problem, it is a little scary though to think such a huge, complex thing could be knocked out by a snacking bird.