International News

GENEVA, (APP/AFP) – The world’s most
powerful particle smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, went offline after a weasel caused a short circuit on a high-voltage transformer.
The collider suffered a “severe electrical perturbation” at 5:30 am
(0330 GMT) Friday, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said in its daily summary of at the giant lab straddling the French-Swiss border.
It said the cause was a “short circuit caused by fouine (weasel)” on
a 66-kilovolt transformer, adding that its connections sustained some damage.
CERN spokesman Arnaud Marsollier told the BBC it would take a few
days to repair the damage caused by the weasel, which did not survive its high-voltage encounter.
“Not the best week for LHC!” CERN said in its summary.
Experiments at the collider are aimed at unlocking clues about how
the universe came into existence by studying fundamental particles, the building blocks of all matter, and the forces that control them.
That discovery earned the 2013 Nobel physics prize for two of the
scientists who had theorised the existence of the Higgs back in 1964.
It later underwent a two-year upgrade to double its energy levels.
The LHC allows beams containing billions of protons to shoot through
the massive collider in opposite directions.