Gallery 3
Collision
Penny Walker-Keefe and Lewis O’Brien
In 2009 news circulated that a bird had dropped a piece of baguette into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), also called an atom smasher, at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), causing it to overheat. CERN confirmed some bread and feathers were discovered in an electrical substation above the LHC but suggested journalists were quick to invent an unlikely story. This anecdote sparked a conversation about particles and bread. Could you accelerate two bread rolls fast enough to create a collision? Would a wormhole to a bakery be opened or a new flaky particle discovered? This video work is the product of hours of Mythbusters-style engineering and backyard experimentation to collide baguettes with spectacular results.
