Is the Large Hadron Collider being sabotaged from the future? Or merely by birds?

For more than a year, the LHC, the world’s largest particle accelerator, has been under repair because of an electrical failure in September 2008.

Now, excitement and mysticism are building again around the $10 billion machine as the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) gears up to circulate a high-energy proton beam around the collider’s 17-mile tunnel. Steve Myers, CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, said that the event should take place this month.

Last week, the collider made headlines when a bird apparently dropped a “bit of baguette” into the accelerator, making the machine shut down. Spokeswoman Katie Yurkewicz said that the incident was similar in effect to a standard power cut. She added that had the machine been going, there would have been no damage, but beams would have been stopped until the machine could be cooled back down to operating temperatures.

(article and photo source: CNN)