In a battle between a rodent and a 17-mile-long superconducting machine designed to smash protons, one might expect the rodent to fare poorly. And in this case, it did, though not without the little guy doing some damage of its own.
From a BBC report:
The Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at Cern is offline after a short circuit - caused by a weasel.
The unfortunate creature did not survive the encounter with a high-voltage transformer at the site near Geneva in Switzerland.
The LHC was running when a "severe electrical perturbation" occurred in the early hours of Friday morning.
A spokesman for Cern said that the weasel did not get into the tunnels, just the electrical facilities.
Repairs will reportedly take a few days.
[For sale: The nuclear fallout bunker of your dreams.]
And I suppose this is as good of a time as any to remind one and all that when touring the Large Hadron Collider it important to remain with your group.
(CORRECTION: It has been made clear to me that a weasel is not a rodent. Sorry, weasels.)
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