News / Sci-Tech

Weasel short circuits CERN’s Large Hadron Collider

Sunday, 01 May 2016 12:27 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 01 May 2016 1:42 AM ]

A weasel is a mammal of the genus Mustela of the family Mustelidae, which also includes badgers, otters, and wolverines.

The world’s most powerful particle accelerator has been short circuited by a weasel. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was forced to temporarily go offline after the critter wandered onto a 66,000-volt transformer in the atom smasher’s electrical facilities in Geneva, Switzerland.

"Following technical issues, including a power cut due to the passage of a weasel on a high voltage electrical transformer," LHC has been halted, said CERN spokesman Arnaud Marsollier.

“The concerned part of the LHC stopped immediately and safely, though some connections were slightly damaged due to an electrical arc,” and are now currently under repair, he said.

He noted that the beech marten -- a member of the weasel family -- did not survive the incident.

*This file photo taken on July 19, 2013 shows a worker riding his bicycle in a tunnel of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Large Hadron Collider (LHC). (AFP)*

“Now when we will be fully back in operation is not easy to say yet. Fixing what is due to the power cut is no big deal — may take just a few days — and on such a big machine we have to deal with this kind of repairs on a regular basis — it is part of the business. But we also have other ongoing technical activities, so at the moment, what I can say is that we will probably not have beams back until end of next week at least,” he said.

The accelerator is housed in a 27-kilometer tunnel located under the French-Swiss border and is best known for its discovery of the Higgs Boson. The collider forces particles into high energy collisions nearing the speed of light and then detects the results.

This file photo taken on July 19, 2013 shows a worker standing below the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), a general-purpose detector at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Large Hadron Collider (LHC), during maintenance works on July 19, 2013 in Meyrin, near Geneva. (AFP)

The incident came at a bad time as scientists had been gearing up to resume experiments at facility following several months of stoppage.
"We will now need to check over the entire machine again,” said Marsollier while noting that it will take more time than previously thought to get started again.

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