Weasel Briefly Knocks Out $10B Particle Accelerator

The machine helped discover the so-called "God particle"

It's one of the physics world's most complex machines, and it has been immobilized — temporarily — by a weasel.

Spokesman Arnaud Marsollier says the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN outside of Geneva, has suspended operations because a weasel invaded a transformer that helps power the machine and set off an electrical outage on Friday.

Authorities say the incident was one of several small glitches that will delay plans to restart the $4.4 billion collider by a few days.

Marsollier says Friday that the weasel died — and little remains of it.

Officials of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym CERN, have been gearing up for new data from the 17-mile circuit that runs underground on the Swiss-French border.

The $10 billion machine was instrumental in the discovery of the Higgs boson, sometimes referred to as the "God particle," and helped scientists determine that it behaves as predicted.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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