Science Is for the Birds
On Nov. 3 the Large Hadron Collider — the 17-mile underground atom smasher designed to find evidence of a hypothetical subatomic particle called the Higgs boson that in theory is responsible for imparting mass to everything in the universe — was briefly taken down by a baguette. O.K., technically it was a bird carrying a baguette, a piece of which fell into the LHC's aboveground equipment and caused its superconducting magnets to heat up. The world's largest particle accelerator suffered a number of other setbacks in 2009, including the explosion of two magnets and the arrest of one of its scientists, leading some scientists to theorize that the LHC was traveling back in time to sabotage itself. Right, like that would ever happen. It doesn't have a flux capacitor.