Large Hadron Collider conks out after French Bread falls on it

Don't bother scratching your head over the title of this piece, you read it right. The Large Hadron Collider aka the Doomsday Machine from CERN stopped functioning on Monday because of a case of some French Bread falling on it.

The CERN scientists on a usual Tuesday morning were perplexed when they detected that the LHC recorded a rise in temperature - the circuit temperature climbed to 8 kelvin, which is significantly higher than the normal operating temperature of 1.8 kelvin. At 8 Kelvin, the LHC's niobium-titanium magnets would quench, or cease superconducting.

When CERN was asked what went wrong and if everything was going to be allright, the reply was 'all is fine' and that the rise in temperature was a part of routine testing. However, CERN's Dr. Mike Lamont told reporters that the problem was actually caused by "a bit of baguette on the busbars." And according to CERN, a bird dropped the piece of break on the overground part of the LHC which caused it to overheat.

Moreover, the LHC had been turned off when the bird dropped the French Bread on it, but getting to the obvious question - what would have happened if the LHC was actually on during that time? Nothing hopefully, was the answer. According to Lamont the rise in temperature would most definitely have been noted during operation and the LHC's beams would have been diverted to "dump caverns" lying a little off the main track of the LHC. in case you're wondering, the core is a 7m-long graphite block encased in steel, water cooled and then further wrapped in 750 tonnes of concrete and iron shielding.

The dump core, as Lamont says, would be radioactive and very hot, but what with the massive layers of shielding and the tons of solid granite in between no one would notice, except the control room staff of course. In the scenario when there are no dump caverns, the LHC's niobium-titanium magnets would stop superconducting at 9.6 Kelvin. When circulating, each of the two beams of hadrons pack enormous amounts of power and if they were to suddenly stop, all the energy would have to go somewhere. That is roughly equal to the damage to being rammed by an aircraft carrier.