A pesky weasel gnawed through electrical wiring and forced the world’s largest particle collider to halt its operations while repairs could be made, according to a story on washingtontimes.com.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), cost around $7 billion to construct, covers and length of about 17 miles and “is designed to smash protons together close to the speed of light,” according to the article. The machine is located near Geneva, and is operated by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Officials say the collider is in a “standby mode.” The say it wasn’t taken totally offline, because a machine such as this one takes a couple of months to restart from complete shutdown. The collider has experienced a number of mishaps over the last several days, according to a briefing from the agency, including a vacuum leak, and a “weird status of some magnets.”
The release added it was not the best week for the LHC.
The collider began operation in September of 2008, and is famous for the discovery of the Higgs boson, called the God particle,a breakthrough in particle physics. Inside the machine, two high-energy particle beams are accelerated to near the speed of light and forces to collide. The electromagnets that guide the particle beams, constructed from electric cables, have to be chilled to a colder-than-space -456.35 degrees
Authorities suspect the invader was a weasel, which are common in the countryside around the collider, but they are still investigating the charred remains of the animal. The attacker apparently was chewing on 66,000-volt electrical cables connected to a transformer the powered the LHC and caused a shortage. Obviously, the weasel did not survive the experience.
This is not the first time the LHC has been halted due to an animal. Back in November of 2009, a piece of bread officials suspect was dropped by a bird, caused a shortage in the power system of one of the LHC’s cooling units. In that case the bird survived, but the collider had to be shut down briefly.
CERN says they expect to have the collider back to full operation soon.