Blame the baguette

In early September 2008, I wrote a post ("The end of Geneva - and the world - as we know it?") on our Africa blog (now closed) about how switching on the Hadron Collider, outside our old home of Geneva, was possibly going to spell the end of the entire world. The concern by some scientists was that in trying to replicate the Big Bang - the origins of our universe - with this enormous atom smasher, the process of Creation would end as quickly as it began by creating a giant black hole that would swallow the earth and bring inhalation to humankind. No small thing, mind you. No "Oops, I guess that was the wrong thing to build. Can we try it again differently next time?"

But because I'm still able to write blog entries, that obviously did not happen. Another item for my Thanksgiving list last week of things that I'm thankful for.

However, in early November this year, there was a somewhat humorous story out of CERN, the scientific facility where this large atom smasher is housed. It seems that this machine, among the most complex scientific instruments ever built by humankind, at the cost of many years of work and many billions of dollars, was sidetracked by a small, insignificant object: a piece of bread. Here is a news report about the incident:

Peckish bird briefly downs big atom smasher

(AFP) – Nov 9, 2009

GENEVA — A peckish bird briefly knocked out part of the world's biggest atom smasher by causing a chain reaction with a piece of bread, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said on Monday.

Bits of a French loaf dropped on an external electrical power supply caused a short circuit last week, triggering fail-safe devices that shut down part of the cooling system of the giant experiment to probe the secrets of the universe, CERN said.

The system was restored several hours after the incident last Tuesday while the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider was barely affected, a spokeswoman said.

"The bird escaped unharmed but lost its bread," CERN said in a statement.

"On Tuesday 3 November, a bird carrying a baguette bread caused a short circuit in an electrical outdoor installation that serves sectors 7-8 and 8-1 of the LHC," it added.

"The knock-on effects included an interruption to the operation of the LHC cryogenics system."

The 27 kilometre-long (17 mile) particle collider, which runs in a circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border near the city of Geneva, has been plagued by problems since it was briefly started up in September 2008.

However, CERN said the latest incident was minor and did not affect attempts to restart the accelerator later this month following repairs.

"It made for a small warming from absolute zero (minus 273 degrees Celsius, minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit) on the Celsius scale to minus 268 degrees but the machine was not stopped," CERN spokesman Renilde Vanden Broek told AFP.

"Everything returned to normal a few hours later and operations were able to resume in the night of November 5," she added.

Designed to shed light on the origins of the universe, the LHC at CERN took nearly 20 years to complete and cost six billion Swiss francs (3.9 billion euros, 4.9 billion dollars) to build.

The bird was believed to be an owl.

(end)

In other words, the process of discovering the origins of our universe, the most profound question ever asked, was thwarted by a simple French baguette. Moral of the story: Baguettes are bad. Or: Don't feed the birds. What brings down one of the biggest and most complex pieces of science equipment that humankind has ever built? Nature and the humble and common baguette. Remember that it was a nature again - an iceburg - that sunk the Titanic. The real moral of the story: Don't mess with nature. Also, in investigating nature, you just may destroy exactly what you're seeking when you create that black hole that's going to swallow the whole planet in an instant.

Thankfully, however, that group over at CERN is better than rocket scientists, and the other day they were able to fire up this puppy and break a record (whatever that means, i.e., what the significance of this is, I do not know). With a news release from CERN itself, there was a photo, and front and center in that photo was our good friend from church in Geneva, Jeff Steinhagen, one of those brilliant scientists who helps to adjust all the knobs and dials on this machine. Way to go, Jeff! (Apparently breaking this record was big enough that Jeff had to call his wife and wake her up at midnight to tell her the news.) Just don't destroy us all in trying to break new records, okay? And put down that forkful of fondue you're eating - you may cause that machine to malfunction again!