The Large Hadron Collider Can’t Catch a Break; Just a Baguette

As a noted engineer once said, “the trickier the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”  The Large Hadron Collider, a huge particle accelerator facility in Europe, recently had trouble due to a magnet problem that was traced to a bad electrical connection.  The resulting problem led to a months-long shutdown.

Now we go from the embarrassing to the bizarre.  The Guardian and other news sources report that the Collider once again had power trouble, causing a shutdown.  The cause?  A bird eating bread on a junction where power enters the facility.  The bread apparently gummed up the junction causing it to overheat.  This makes ordinary power failures look perfectly reasonable.  No word yet on how long this delay will be.