LHC faces another setback with cable-gnawing weasel

After a series of repairs and upgrades, the Large Hadron Collider has been colliding particles at high speed for almost a year now. But now the particle accelerator has recently come to a standstill again. The reason? A weasel has gnawed on a power cable.

CERN spokesman Arnaud Marsollier said the LHC went offline on Friday after a power supply problem developed, he told NPR. After the engineers went on a research trip, the reason for the problems was soon found. The charred body of a ‘small animal’ was found near one of the cables. Further investigation showed that it must probably be a weasel, although it was not ruled out that it was a marten. Understandably, no further investigation into the identity of the animal has been carried out.

CERN, which has a budget of around 7.5 billion euros with the LHC, was about to collect more data about the Higgs boson discovered in 2012, when the weasel struck. Due to repair work, the experiments therefore have to be postponed for a while. Although it only takes a few days to replace the hardware, it could be weeks before the particle accelerator can run at full speed again.

CERN has often had problems surrounding the particle accelerator. For example, last year the LHC briefly went offline due to a piece of flying metal. However, the spokesperson has more striking stories; for example, in 2009, a bird is said to have dropped a piece of baguette on an important electrical component. In addition, CERN employees stated that such incidents involving birds are more common.