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Weasel chews power cable, puts LHC experiments on hold

Scientists at CERN located the damage while performing warm-up tests and readying the LHC for new experiments.

By Brooks Hays
A weasel recently disrupted Large Hadron Collider experiments when it chewed through cables and damaged a transformer. Photo by UPI/Maximilien Brice/CERN
A weasel recently disrupted Large Hadron Collider experiments when it chewed through cables and damaged a transformer. Photo by UPI/Maximilien Brice/CERN

GENEVA, Switzerland, April 29 (UPI) -- A weasel has temporarily thwarted the search for mysterious subatomic particles.

As New Scientist reported, the slender mammal chewed a cable of the Large Hadron Collider. Damage to the 66-kilovolt electrical transformer has forced scientists to put their experiments on hold for several days while repairs are made.

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"I can confirm that we had some issues overnight with electrical trouble," Arnaud Marsollier, a spokesperson for CERN, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research, told New Scientist. "We suspect it might be due to a small animal."

The news broke after a series of slide images detailing recent LHC tests and damages were uploaded to the Internet and subsequently posted on Reddit.

One of the slides blames an "electrical perturbation" caused by a short-circuit on a "fouine" -- an Italian word for weasel.

Scientists at CERN located the damage while performing warm-up tests and readying the LHC for new experiments after a period of inactivity over the winter.

The repairs could take up to eight days, after which scientists expect to get back to the task of discovering new subatomic particles -- including examples of dark matter.

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In 2009, the collider suffered a similar setback when a piece of baguette dropped by a bird momentarily derailed warm-up testing.

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