Slog reader Jeff Yencho just asked me to comment on this piece of news ("I read this today and thought 'geez, I'd love to hear Charles' take on this...'"):

Sometime on Nov. 3, the supercooled magnets in sector 81 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), outside Geneva, began to dangerously overheat. Scientists rushed to diagnose the problem, since the particle accelerator has to maintain a temperature colder than deep space in order to work. The culprit? "A bit of baguette," says Mike Lamont of the control center of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built and maintains the LHC. Apparently, a passing bird may have dropped the chunk of bread on an electrical substation above the accelerator, causing a power cut. The baguette was removed, power to the cryogenic system was restored and within a few days the magnets returned to their supercool temperatures.

While most scientists would write off the event as a freak accident, two esteemed physicists have formulated a theory that suggests an alternative explanation: perhaps a time-traveling bird was sent from the future to sabotage the experiment.

From Wikipedia:

[In 1962, two physicists (Penzias worked with Wilson) began working in Holmdel, New Jersey] on ultra-sensitive cryogenic microwave receivers intended for radio astronomy observations.

In 1964, on building their most sensitive antenna/receiver system, Penzias and Wilson encountered radio noise that they could not explain. It was far less energetic than the radiation given off by the Milky Way, and it was isotropic, so they assumed their instrument was subject to interference by terrestrial sources. They tried, and then rejected, the hypothesis that the radio noise emanated from New York City. An examination of the microwave horn antenna showed it was full of pigeon droppings (which Penzias described as "white dielectric material"). After the pair removed the guano buildup, and the pigeons were shot (each physicist says the other ordered the deed), the noise remained. Having rejected all sources of interference, the pair published a paper announcing their findings. This was later identified as the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the radio remnant of the Big Bang. This allowed astronomers to confirm the Big Bang, and to correct many of their previous assumptions about it.

But, Jeff, do you see the cosmic connection? The scientist heard the birth of the universe and thought it was bird shit. What, in the case of the Hadron Collider, are we to make of this piece of undigested bird food? It cannot, I think, be separated from the bird shit that was once on the antenna/receiver system.