The Large Hadron Collider in the Swiss Alps has come under fire from home owners as far away as Naples.
The LHC is tasked with probing the very depths of the atom by smashing two atoms together at extraordinarily high speeds and having a look at the broken bits to see if there is anything in them. This ethos had got the physicists in trouble before when they smashed crockery together to see if there was a universal part (dubbed a Quirk) that made up all crockery. It turns out that there isn't, and these physicists are no longer welcome in Debenhams.
Now they are in trouble again.
In order to steer the particles to be smashed together round in a big ring, massive electromagnets are used. Now every time that the LHC is switched on, fridge magnets in a six hundred mile radius are becoming demagnetised and falling off, for (according to the physicists at the LHC) no believable reason.
"It took us a while to spot the connection," said Professor Havana Soul, of the LHC maintenance team. "After all, fridge magnets are notoriously unreliable. At least, they are on my fridge. They're forever falling off."
"It's really annoying," said Maria Della Costa Rosa Del Cappuccino of Milan. "I had a beautiful fridge magnet of the leaning tower of Pisa, it was a family heirloom, and it fell off and smashed. We replaced it, because we really do need to put bits of paper on our fridge. Then a few days later, that fell off. I eventually realised it was every time the large hadron collider was switched on. I created a Farcebook group called The Large Hadron Collidor Demagnetises My Freidge Magnets, and we now have over a million members. If any readers are suffering from dodgy fridge magnets, it's the LHC! Join our group!"
"We are sorry about Ms Della Costa Rosa Del Cappuccino's fridge magnets," said Havana Soul. "I suggest she tries post-it notes."
