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Weasel Apparently Shuts Down World's Most Powerful Particle Collider (npr.org)
New reader mjnhbg1088 cites an article on NPR: A small mammal has sabotaged the world's most powerful scientific instrument. The Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile superconducting machine designed to smash protons together at close to the speed of light, went offline overnight. Engineers investigating the mishap found the charred remains of a furry creature near a gnawed-through power cable. "We had electrical problems, and we are pretty sure this was caused by a small animal," says Arnaud Marsollier, head of press for CERN, the organization that runs the $7 billion particle collider in Switzerland. Although they had not conducted a thorough analysis of the remains, Marsollier says they believe the creature was "a weasel, probably." The shutdown comes as the LHC was preparing to collect new data on the Higgs Boson, a fundamental particle it discovered in 2012. The Higgs is believed to endow other particles with mass, and it is considered to be a cornerstone of the modern theory of particle physics. CERN says the creature may have been a marten.
There are bugs, and then there are weasels.
...Goes the weasel.
IR Baboon is not happy with estupid weasel.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I just want to know how charred something has to be for it to be "probably" a weasel.
Somewhat ironic since Nibbler the Ferret helped get it running to begin with: http://www.best-top10-list.com... Ferrets have a pretty good history for helping out this way in scientific institutions, going back at least to 1971 in Fermilab: http://boingboing.net/2013/06/...
Weaseling out of things is what sets us apart from the animals. Except the weasel....
No, a weasel is weasily wecognisable. Stoats are stoatally different.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Back in the 1990s a whole bunch of weasels went up against Superconducting Super Collider. The SSC died, and was reduced a mere hole in the ground in the southern suburbs of Dallas, TX. Never underestimate the power of these congress critters.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So I guess they suffered a Marten Short.
It was a 66KV sub-transmission supply. If you touch one, you will have possibly been a person. And that is assuming the protection works fast. We had a protection system fail, miles of power line had to be rebuilt and the damage to the area was so great no one knows the cause of the original fault.