Bread crumbs 'knockout' the world's largest machine

Despite being the most expensive and complex machine on the planet, a large particle accelerator breaks down after a piece of bread falls into the electrical system.

Large particle accelerators are contained in a circular tunnel with a circumference of 27 km. Photo: physicstoday.org.

The Large Hadron Collider - valued at $ 6.2 billion - is the largest and most modern particle accelerator in the world today. It was designed to create a direct collision between proton rays (one of the fundamental particles) with extremely large kinetic energy. The main task of a large particle accelerator is to create the initial conditions just as the new cosmic period would take to understand the formation of matter. It is therefore called the "machine of creation."

The engine started testing last year, but was broken for several days because of helium leaks. After the problem is fixed it returns to normal operation. But in the first few days of November it's broken because the temperature in many parts increased dramatically.

According to the Daily Mail, scientists have identified that the engine is heating up because a cooling unit has stopped working. When inspecting the machine, experts found a piece of bread in the high-voltage power supply system for the refrigeration unit.

Dr. Mike Larmont, one of the large particle accelerator operators, claimed that a bird dropped a piece of bread into an electrical system that stopped supplying electricity to the refrigerating unit. As a result, many other components get hot, causing the machine to stop working.

15 countries have provided funding for the large particle accelerator project. More than 8,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories participated in the design. The machine is housed in a tunnel located 100 m below the ground. The tunnel is 3.8 m in diameter, has a concrete structure and was built between 1983 and 1988.