How Did a Weasel Shut Down the £4.8bn Large Hadron Collider?

Everyone’s heard the nursery rhyme “pop goes the weasel.” And according to the latest intel from CERN, the world’s most advanced machine is all too familiar with not so cuddly mammal. While weasels are usually carnivorous, one particular member of the beech marten species decided that one of the Large Hadron Collider’s (LHC) transformer wires would make a tasty meal. A few gnaws later and the most technologically sophisticated machine on the planet was immobilised to the point that it had to be manually shutdown.

Hungry weasel wreaks havoc

Despite development costs of more than £4.8 billion, it seems that the legendary 17-mile long particle accelerator was unable to withstand the wrath of a hungry weasel. Operating in Switzerland, operators confirmed that the LHC suffered from a "severe electrical perturbation" which short circuited the entire machine in the early hours of April 29.

Sadly, the weasel didn’t survive its run in with the 66kV high-voltage transformer, and the remains of its body were found next to the mauled cable. It took several days to repair the damage, with a bill topping thousands of pounds.

CERN quick to respond

CERN was cool and unconcerned about the incident, and released an update reading, "Many of CERN’s sites are located in the countryside and similar events have happened a few times in the past… They are part of life of such an accelerator, as with any large industrial installation… A team assessed the situation over the weekend and found no indication of damage inside the transformer.” 

With repairs now completed, the LHC is on track for its 2016 physics run. Having already discovered the Higgs Boson, the ‘world's most ambitious science experiment’ is now continuing to force particles into high energy collisions in a bid to uncover a host of mysterious particles, including pentaquarks, gravitons and dark matter.

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