Pop went the weasel and down went the Large Hadron Collider

A May 31, 2007, file photo shows the Large Hadron Collider in its tunnel at the European Particle Physics Laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. A spokesman said operations were suspended because a weasel invaded a transformer and set off an electrical outage Friday, April 29, 2016.
A May 31, 2007, file photo shows the Large Hadron Collider in its tunnel at the European Particle Physics Laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. A spokesman said operations were suspended because a weasel invaded a transformer and set off an electrical outage Friday, April 29, 2016.

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

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

Authorities said the incident was one of several small glitches that will delay plans to restart the $4.4 billion collider.

The weasel died, and little remains of it, Marsollier said.

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.

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