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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.
Just before the power went down, many people reported hearing words, reverberating throughout the length of the tunnel containing the Large Hadron Collider...
I AM WEASEL!
Michael Dorn has been cleared of all wrongdoing, as numerous eyewitnesses placed him on a California studio lot at the time of the incident.
#DeleteChrome
I just want to know how charred something has to be for it to be "probably" a weasel.
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
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.