I saw something about this on my Facebook news feed and originally passed it off for an Onion article being circulated as truth. But then I saw our friends at Symmetry magazine posting and article about it and couldn’t believe my eyes!
Turns out even the birds have it in for the LHC and are trying to stop the machine from creating a gigantic black hole that will swallow us all! (IMPORTANT NOTE: THE LAST SENTANCE WAS SAID WITH SARCASM!! I do not believe nor think that anyone should believe that the end of the world corresponds with the beginning of the LHC). As you can see by the official release from CERN (click here) a bird carrying a baguette bread caused the cooling to trip when it dropped its would be dinner on some outdoor electrical equipment.
Dr. Robert Wilson and Dr. Arno Penzias in front of the Horn Antenna, 1975.
This reminded me of another famous story in physics that had to do with the detection of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.
Basically the story goes that while doing a measurement using their new piece of technology, a very sensitive antenna that could pick up faint radio signals, at Bell Labs, Wilson and Penzias noticed that they were getting a constant background noise that they couldn’t account for.
After some retuning and testing they even went so far as to think that the source of their background noise was coming from birds living in the horn antenna that were leaving droppings that would radiate and give a background source.
So they climbed into the antenna, chased the birds out, cleaned everything up…and still had the background. Lucky for them, and all of us, the real source was identified as coming from the afterglow of the Big Bang and a new era of scientific understanding started and the two of them won a Nobel prize.
My point, the birds tried to sabotage us once from making a major scientific breakthrough…and now they are at it again! First it was bird droppings, now they aren’t even waiting to eat their dinner…they’d rather just drop it in the electronics. Those are some feisty birds!
Some funny related news aritcles
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49304173,00.htm
http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200945/4748/LHC-overheats-following-shock-bread-bomb
