These sorts of mishaps are not unheard of, says Marsollier. Repairs will take a few days, but getting the machine fully ready to smash might take another week or two. He added that while it was, fortunately, not every day that an animal affected the equipment, it was not that surprising as the research facility is in the countryside. A small mammal has sabotaged the world's most powerful scientific instrument. Unfortunately, Marsollier says, scientists will have to wait while workers bring the machine back online. The transformer connections were damaged. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. The Higgs is believed to endow other particles with mass, and it is considered to be a cornerstone of the modern theory of particle physics. Coronavirus: How do you vaccinate the world? (Update: An official briefing document from CERN indicates the creature may have been a marten.). Coronavirus: How do you vaccinate the world? Millions of people are returning home following the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. If those other particles exist, they could revolutionize researcher's understanding of everything from the laws of gravity, to quantum mechanics. Of course, small mammals cause problems in all sorts of organizations. The Large Hadron Collider uses superconducting magnets to smash sub-atomic particles together at enormous energies. BBC iWonder: What will the Large Hadron Collider discover next? Engineers investigating the mishap found the charred remains of a furry creature near a gnawed-through power cable. Such "small issues" with the equipment were all part of the running of the LHC, Mr Marsollier said, and experts were used to carrying out repairs. VideoCoronavirus: How do you vaccinate the world? The laboratory is famous for housing the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, measuring a massive 27 kilometers. "It may be mid-May," he says. Utah monolith: Has the mysterious metal object disappeared? And it’s all thanks to a little weasel. The LHC underwent upgrade work between 2013 and 2015. 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