<story><title>Weasel Apparently Shuts Down World&apos;s Most Powerful Particle Collider</title><url>http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/29/476154494/weasel-shuts-down-world-s-most-powerful-particle-collider</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>captainmuon</author><text>Great, I skip reading the daily run meeting slides once, and then find &lt;i&gt;this&lt;/i&gt; in the news (I work on the ATLAS experiment at the LHC [1]).&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of nasty images in the (internal) presentation. That poor weasel tried to eat a cable or something and got completely fried :-(. For those wondering how this can happen, it looks to me like a normal outdoor transformer station, like there are many all around the world. I actually wonder why you don&amp;#x27;t hear about power outages like this (not at CERN, but in regular cities) more frequently. Maybe public power supplies are more redundant?&lt;p&gt;([1] Note I&amp;#x27;m only posting as a private person and not in any official function. Disclaim disclaim yadda yadda.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>walrus</author><text>Squirrels accounted for 28% of fiber cuts in 2010 for Level 3 Communications.[1]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.level3.com&amp;#x2F;level-3-network&amp;#x2F;the-10-most-bizarre-and-annoying-causes-of-fiber-cuts&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.level3.com&amp;#x2F;level-3-network&amp;#x2F;the-10-most-bizarre-a...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Weasel Apparently Shuts Down World&apos;s Most Powerful Particle Collider</title><url>http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/29/476154494/weasel-shuts-down-world-s-most-powerful-particle-collider</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>captainmuon</author><text>Great, I skip reading the daily run meeting slides once, and then find &lt;i&gt;this&lt;/i&gt; in the news (I work on the ATLAS experiment at the LHC [1]).&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of nasty images in the (internal) presentation. That poor weasel tried to eat a cable or something and got completely fried :-(. For those wondering how this can happen, it looks to me like a normal outdoor transformer station, like there are many all around the world. I actually wonder why you don&amp;#x27;t hear about power outages like this (not at CERN, but in regular cities) more frequently. Maybe public power supplies are more redundant?&lt;p&gt;([1] Note I&amp;#x27;m only posting as a private person and not in any official function. Disclaim disclaim yadda yadda.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wlesieutre</author><text>&amp;gt; I actually wonder why you don&amp;#x27;t hear about power outages like this (not at CERN, but in regular cities) more frequently. Maybe public power supplies are more redundant?&lt;p&gt;Happens pretty frequently, they just don&amp;#x27;t get reported beyond local news unless it affects something noteworthy. &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;cybersquirrel1.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;cybersquirrel1.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; maps a lot of these &amp;quot;Cyber Squirrel Operations&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Mainly squirrels, birds, raccoons, snakes, and rats.</text></comment>