By Michael Banks

Oh crumbs.

After talk of the Higgs boson travelling back in time and sabotaging the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN particle-physics lab, a more mundane object temporarily stopped the machine from operating on Tuesday night.

According to a note posted today on the CERN users’ pages, a piece of baguette placed in a cooling station caused a sector in the LHC to heat up by a few degrees to the bemusement of engineers.

The 27 km circumference LHC has eight sectors, each 3.3 km long. Each sector has a cooling station, or “cryoplant”, which helps the machine get down to the chilly temperature of 4.2 K.

The crusty piece of bread was found in one of the cryoplants and happened to be lying on a busbar -- an electrical connection made of copper that are generally wide and flat to allow heat to dissipate more easily.

The well placed baguette then caused a short circuit in the cryogenic equipment that heated one of the sectors to around 10 K.

“The best guess is that it was dropped by a bird, either that or it was thrown out of a passing aeroplane,” a spokeswoman from CERN told the Times.

But it seems the best guess was right after all. The note on the CERN users page said that the culprit was a “bird carrying a baguette bread” and that the “bird escaped unharmed but lost its bread”.

The statement read: "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."

At least the note didn’t say that it was a bird travelling back in time with a piece of bread hellbent on sabotaging the LHC from finding the Higgs.

There's a fascinating obituary in the Daily Telegraph of Robert Rines -- the American physicist, lawyer, inventor, award-winning composer and hunter of the Loch Ness monster.

The Boston-born polymath studied physics at MIT and worked on radar imaging technology at the institute's famous radiation laboratory. This technology has since been used in a wide range of applications from missile guidance to medical imaging -- and monster hunting.

Rines then went on to become a lawyer specializing in intellectual property and spent much of his working life in this profession.

But Rines did find time to write several Broadway productions -- winning an Emmy award along the way -- and dedicated much of his spare time to searching for the Loch Ness Monster.

His interest in the mythical -- or perhaps elusive! -- creature began in 1972, and his sonar and photographic images of objects resembling Nessie were the subject of great scientific debate.

It's hard to believe today, but some images were even published in a 1975 news story in Nature.

The article is entitled Nessiteras skeptyx, perhaps a "scientific" name for the monster! Amazingly it wasn't the 1 April issue of the journal!

I tried to read the article online but I could seem to access it via my subscription, maybe you will have better luck.

Rines died on 1 November at the age of 87.

By James Dacey

We are like detectives who have arrived on the scene after the crime has been committed; we find traces of evidence everywhere including DNA footprints.

A good scientific theory is one that is vulnerable to being proven wrong but has not yet been disproved.

Historically, religion has attempted to dispel confusion but science does this too and it does it better!

These were just three sound bites that stuck in my mind after going along to see Richard Dawkins as he delivered another dogged defence of the theory of evolution in Bristol yesterday.

Speaking at the city's Festival of Ideas, Dawkins was accompanied on stage by his wife Lalla Ward, an English actress best known for appearing in the BBC science fiction series Dr Who where she played the part of Romana in the late 1970s.

According to Dawkins, the couple have been giving talks as a double act for the past few years -- ever since Lalla stepped in when Dawkins lost his voice on a tour of the US.

The couple used the first section of the event to read extracts from Dawkins' new book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. "This is not another anti-religious book - I've done that and got the T-shirt. Evolution is now a fact and this book will finally lay out all the evidence," he said.

The thing that immediately struck me was that, despite all the sharp put-downs, Dawkins is actually incredibly mild-mannered in person. After reading his last book The God Delusion, I had assumed that the man they call "Darwin's pit bull" had by now fully-militarised his atheist campaign and would appear slavering at the mouth.

Indeed, one of Physics World's correspondents had his own recent brush with Dawkins when the evolutionary biologist refused to get involved with his research project. Dawkins' reason being that the project was funded by the Templeton Foundation - an organization that purports to fuse the ideals of science and religion but which Dawkins views as a "subversion of science".

But the way Dawkins delivered his readings, equipped with a few funny voices, was more like a polished actor bringing to life a children's book.

And according to Dawkins, he is not actually an atheist but agnostic. However, this is only because "technically we all have to be" as there is no such thing as an immutable fact. He said that a Christian God is "no more likely than Yahweh, leprechauns, or the flying spaghetti monster".

Hmm, clearly he's has not lost his sense of mischief.

By James Dacey

Apologies.

I realize this is supposed to be a hard-hitting news site reporting physics breakthroughs, but I just couldn't resist flagging this up.

It was whilst writing a story this afternoon about water-repellency in lotus leaves that I noticed something very strange. Bizarrely, everybody's favourite mop-topped Liverpudlian seems to reveal himself in the high-speed photo images of water-droplets being ejected from the leaf surface.

Well, it made me laugh anyway…

By Matin Durrani

Vitaly Ginzburg, who turned 93 last month, is without doubt one of the leading Russian theorists of the 20th century, who shared the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physics with Alexei Abrikosov and Tony Leggett for their work on the theory of superconductors and superfluids.

He's a long-standing admirer of Physics World magazine -- having first written for us back in 1997 -- and when the opportunity arose to interview him, I jumped at the chance.

Ginzburg gave answers to our questions in Russian, which were then translated into English by Vitaly Kisin, a former colleauge of mine here at Institute of Physics Publishing. I must also thank Maria Aksenteva, who is the managing editor of the journal Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, which Ginzburg has edited for the last 11 years. She is very much his "eyes and ears".

In the interview, which you can read by following this link, Ginzburg talks about how his interest in physics developed, why he distrusts the Church's growing role in Russian society, and how his role in developing a hydrogen bomb for the Soviet Union was what saved his life.:

The interview is in the opinion section of physicsworld.com's In-depth channel which currently contains a couple other great articles worth checking out.

In How to publish a scientific comment Rick Trebino relives the time he tried - and failed - to have a comment published in a scientific journal. You couldn't make the story up.

Then as Imperial College London counts down to a debate on the pros and cons of human space flight on 12 November, the two panellists write exclusively for us, presenting their arguments for and against manned or robotic space missions in the article Human spaceflight: science or spectacle? Championing robotic missions is David Clements, a lecturer in astrophysics from Imperial. Making the case for human space flight is Ian Crawford, a reader in planetary science and astrobiology from Birkbeck College, London.

Finally, Robert P Crease probes arguments made by US energy secretary Steven Chu that the next generation of synchrotron sources are an essential tool for meeting the energy challenge -- check out his article "The Lure of Synchrotrons" by following this link

By James Dacey

European leaders have been in Brussels over the past couple of days and there has been an lot of talk about climate change. The latest reports suggest they are reaching some sort of agreement over how to help the world's poorer nations to commit to restricting greenhouse gas emissions.

The EU summit in Brussels represents one of the last opportunities for European nations to iron-out disagreements ahead of December's UN conference in Copenhagen, which is could result in a global treaty on climate change.

So assuming that the world's politicians can wrangle their way to solid, legally binding targets in the Danish capital, we will then be faced with the next big set of choices - how to achieve the targets.

Whatever way the green revolution is played out over the next few decades, it will be necessary for the developed world to quickly get over its addiction to fossil fuels, and to deploy a whole raft of renewable energy solutions. More than ever, governments will need clear scientific advice about the different options ahead of them.

Despite currently lagging many of its European neighbours over renewables, the UK now at least has a clear-thinking scientific advisor in the form of David Mackay.

If you're not already familiar with Mackay, he is author of the book Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air. Despite being available for free on-line, the book has been something of a publishing phenomenon and was described by the Guardian as "this year's must-read book".

You can also read Physics World's review of the book here.

When I saw Mackay on Wednesday giving a talk at the Institute of Physics in London, he was quick to establish his philosophy. He says we need are in need of a "grassroots arithmetic movement" in which members of the public should lobby/educate their local MPs with the figures of renewables.

To a packed-out lecture room, Mackay explained why he prefers to express energy consumption in terms of kilowatt hours per day per person. His reason being, that these figures mostly fall in the range 1-100, and results can easily be translated into personal forms. "I am pro arithmetic, not any specific energy policy," he said.

By James Dacey

When the European Space Agency (ESA) recently announced the discovery of 32 new exoplanets, it struck me how quickly we can become numbed to the wonders of scientific discovery.

In 1995, astronomers generated a surge of excitement when they discovered the first planet to be orbiting a star other than our Sun. Over the past 14 years, astronomy has entered a dramatic new era with more than 400 of these exoplanets now officially catalogued. The recent launch of NASA's Kepler mission and with ESA considering its ambitious PLATO project means that we may well have detected thousands of exoplanets within the next few years.

But as the discoveries now come thick and fast, have we becoming a bit blasé about exoplanets?

Well, one researcher in Germany has come up with an idea that could re-inject some of the initial excitement. Wladimir Lyra of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy is proposing that we give names to the exoplanets based on Roman-Greek mythology thus ditching the dry cataloguing that has led to planet names like MOA-2008-BLG-310-L b.

Of course, the reason why the International Astronomical Union came up with their scientific naming system is because the heavens may well be awash with exoplanets and it would soon become impractical to name every single one of them.

But as Lyra points out, every other class of astronomical body discovered to date has been given a name including the 15, 000 asteroids and minor planets.

"Our place in the cosmos is not special in any way, so there is no reason why only the planetary objects in the solar system should be named," writes Lyra citing the Copernican Principle.

Lyra's proposed system would assign names based on the mythological stories of the constellations. For example, the planets in Andromeda will be named after Andromeda's myth and the planets in Hercules after Hercules' myth. Inevitably, there are a few caveats to the system, which Lyra explains in his paper on the arXiv preprint server.

By Hamish Johnston

Here's a question for you -- what is the easiest way to move a large rug?

The answer, according to carpet fitters -- as well as two papers in Physical Review Letters -- is to create a "ruck" and then push in along the rug (see photo above).

The reason, apparently, is that the ruck is quasi-static, which means that it can be moved easily by a series of gentle pushes that don't take it very far out of equilibrium

I thought I would try it for myself, but the only rugs I could find were in the main entrance to Dirac House and there was too much foot traffic to do the experiment safely!

If you want to read more about rucks, check out Statics and Inertial Dynamics of a Ruck in a Rug by Dominic Vella, Arezki Boudaoud Mokhtar Adda-Bedia as well Shape and Motion of a Ruck in a Rug by John M. Kolinski, Pascale Aussillous and L. Mahadevan.

The first paper begins with an investigation of the conditions needed for a static ruck to persist -- rather than flatten out -- once it's been created. The team derived an equation describing the transition and tested it experimentally using several "rug" and "floor" materials, incluing a real rug on a wooden floor.

The equation, which had to be solved numerically, did a pretty good job of predicting which rucks survive and which collapse.

Ruck on a roll

The second paper looks at rucks "rolling" downhill by placing a thin latex rug on an inclined plane. The team found that a static ruck will begin to roll when the plane is tilted above a critical angle. It will continue to roll until the angle is reduced to a second critical angle -- which is smaller than the first angle.

From this, the team concluded that the coefficient of static rolling friction is greater that the coefficient of dynamic rolling friction.

You're probably wondering what they mean by a rolling ruck?

To show that the ruck was rolling -- rather than sliding -- the team followed the paths of points on the rug as the ruck moved through and found that they move on a cycloidal tragectory. In other words, the points moved as if they were on the rim of a rolling wheel.

You're probably also wondering why PRL has published two papers on rugs?

According to the first paper rug rucks have "long proved to be a useful analogy
in explaining a range of important physical phenomena". These include dislocations in crystalline materials as well as wrinkle-drive motion, which has been observed in living organisms including inchworms.

By James Dacey

This thought-provoking image forms part of the advertising campaign for a new UK television series that will look at the controversial history of science and scientists addressing the issue of race.

Race: science's last taboo has been created by Channel 4 and will be focused around five documentaries, each one engaging in a different aspect of the debate.

The season kicks-off tonight with a programme about race and intelligence, which includes the controversy surrounding James Watson's cancelled UK lecture tour of 2007.

In case you missed it at the time, the Nobel Laureate -- who co-discovered the double-helical structure of DNA -- was quoted as saying that there is scientific evidence to suggest that black people are less intelligent than people of other races. People were so incensed that Watson was forced to abandon his tour and leave the UK early.

For more details about the new series, check out the related website. Amongst other features, you can offer your own definition of race -- though bear in mind you've only got 140 characters!

By James Dacey

In economic circles, the notion of there being a clear divide between the "developed" and the "developing" world has long been a discredited one. Indeed the economies of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are now widely recognized as rapidly growing with the potential to compete with the richest economies in the world within the next few decades.

Now, it seems that the folks interested in scientific development are also starting to recognize the role of these "middle" world nations.

This week, the developing world's academy of sciences (TWAS) announced that it was looking to double its endowment fund to US$25 million to support science and scientists in the developing world. It hopes to raise the funds by seeking donations from the more successful developing world countries such as the BRIC nations. The announcement was made at the academy's 11th general meeting in Durban, South Africa.

When I heard this, it struck me as an echo of something Fernando Quevedo, new director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), had said to me a couple of weeks ago. If you're not familiar with the ICTP, it was founded in 1964 as the inspiration of the Pakistani Nobel-prize-winning theorist Abdus Salam, who wanted to establish an international research centre for young scientists from the developing world. The ICTP has its headquarters in Trieste, Italy, where it also houses TWAS.

Quevedo said that he will be using his presidency to try and build more networks across the developing world. His idea being that the nations like the BRIC group, which are starting to churn out more science year-on-year, can help give a leg-up to the nations that are still struggling to get their science bases off the ground. He cites academic networks and improved internet connectivity as key tools.

"The developing world has changed a lot in the past 40 years. Some of the larger countries like Mexico, Brazil, China and India are now offering a significant contribution to international science," he said. Adding, "But there are also smaller countries, particularly in South America and Africa that have been slower to develop, which people still don't like to talk about".

By Hamish Johnston

Three new video interviews with top physicists are now available on our multimedia page. This month's theme is spintronics and I had the pleasure of speaking with two leaders in that field -- Albert Fert and David Awschalom -- at the Royal Society’s recent “The Spin on Electronics!” discussion meeting. We’ve also produced a selection of video “vox pops” with physicists at the meeting.

If you are new to spintronics -- or if you are wondering what all the excitement is about -- David Awschalom of the University of California, Santa Barbara provides a fantastic introduction to the field and explains how electron spin could be harnessed to create extremely dense computer memories and perhaps even quantum computers.

Awschalom also outlines the challenges that must be overcome before we see the next generation of spintronics devices and explains how he is addressing some of these in his lab.

Albert Fert of Université Paris-Sud, Orsay shared the 2007 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of giant magnetoresistance and is not content to rest on his laurels. He tells me about his current research projects, which include the development of spintronics-based tuneable microwave sources that could someday be exploited in mobile phones and other consumer electronics.

If you store lots of multimedia on your computer, Fert is one person you should thank. He also explains how his research in pure and applied physics was commercialized by IBM to create highly sensitive read heads for hard drives.

Vox pops

And last, but by no means least, we’ve made a “vox pop” video of short interviews with a wide range of people at the meeting.

For example, spintronics guru and meeting organizer Stuart Parkin of IBM Almaden describes how a spintronics racetrack memory works; Ian Appelbaum of the University of Maryland explains why humble silicon could be the material of choice for future spintronics circuits; and Theo Rasing of Radboud University in the Netherlands talks about his lab’s recent successes in flipping spins very quickly using laser pulses. And if you are considering a career in spintronics, you can hear several PhD students explain why they find the field so exciting.

Finally, a plug for the Royal Society, which kindly allowed us to film in its fantastic London premises.

If you are in easy reach of London, I would keep an eye on the Royal Society’s series of Discussion Meetings. I have been to two so far - the first was on the cross fertilization between cosmology and condensed matter physics, and the most recent on spintronics. Both meetings included talks by top physicists from around the world -- and best of all, anyone can attend for free (but you must register online ahead of time).

The next physics-related meeting looks like a real humdinger: The detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society on 25-25 January 2010. Confirmed speakers and chairs include Lord Martin Rees, Catherine Cesarsky, Paul Davies and Colin Pillinger.

Hmm, I might go to that one myself!