Bird strike
Dan Drollette
Friday, 06 November 2009 14:10 UTC
Below is a news item from the CERN users website, which was only released this morning. As of this afternoon, there were 2,760 hits on Google referring to it! (Half of iSGTW is published on the grounds of CERN.)
News: 6 November 2009
LHC “bird-bread” strike
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. The knock-on effects included an interruption to the
operation of the LHC cryogenics system. The bird escaped unharmed but
lost its bread.
The standard failsafe systems came into operation and after the cause
was identified, re-cooling of the machine began and the sectors were
back at operating temperature last night. The incident was similar in
effect to a standard power cut, for which the machine protection systems
are very well prepared.
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Updated 06 November 2009 14:13 UTC
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Replies
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Anonymous
The scuttlebutt is that it was one heckuva large piece of baguette. Someone said that “If it was a bird, it must have been an albatross.”
PS — All the science publications are having fun with this. See the Popular Science blog. But no one seems too freaked or negative.
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Well, here’s what today’s CERN Bulletin has to say, in The Truth about Birds and Baguettes.
“. . . the notion that the power cut might have been caused by a piece of bread dropped by a passing bird on the substation in question started to spread. A power cut suddenly became a story too good to ignore. Before you could say ‘crumbs’, the press office phones were ringing off the hook as journalists demanded to know how it could be that a piece of bread could lay low the world’s mightiest machine. Of course, no such thing had happened, and a statement was rapidly concocted.
To this day, we do not know what caused the power cut, but it is true that feathers and bread were found at the site."
See the CERN Bulletin for more.
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