The Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile superconducting machine designed to smash protons together at close to the speed of light, went offline overnight.
boil the water all you want, it will never get hotter than 212 degrees fahrenheit 100 degrees celsius 373 kelvin. it will disappear rather than give you the satisfaction. energy gathered and forced into just a few infinitesimal particles, bounded by magnetism. too energetic, too wild to touch anything. close to the speed of light. never there. pour all the energy you want into those protons, they will never get faster than 300,000 kilometers per second. they will make a 17 mile marathon under geneva ten thousand times a second but they will not tolerate 10001. they will get heavier, denser, slower, decay, disappear, rather than give you the satisfaction.
Engineers investigating the mishap found the charred remains of a furry creature near a gnawed-through power cable.
underground, concrete all around. wires by the thousand. conduits. an animal burrows down, escaping the surface. the surface contains so much which is so much bigger than it. it finds an enormous contraption beyond comprehension bringing hadrons to their boiling point. a abhorrent apparatus to push the smallest of small things to their limit. to dash them apart and photograph their remains. computers in 35 countries will pore over every detail of the deaths of these particles. with perfect empathy, the animal selects a cable and begins to chew.
Although they had not conducted a thorough analysis of the remains, Marsollier says they believe the creature was “a weasel, probably.”
with perfect empathy, the weasel selects a cable and begins to chew.
(Update: An official briefing document from CERN indicates the creature may have been a marten.)
with perfect empathy, the marten selects a cable and begins to chew. it’s the work of only a few minutes. the flow of electrons finds a new more conductive path. select particles of the marten’s body are greatly accelerated, and the rest are halted.
Unfortunately, Marsollier says, scientists will have to wait while workers bring the machine back online. Repairs will take a few days, but getting the machine fully ready to smash might take another week or two. “It may be mid-May,” he says.
within seconds, the electrons have unwittingly destroyed both their new path and the old and must stop. the collider grinds to a halt. it will be repaired. only a matter of weeks. the parts of the marten that could resist or flee are gone; they disappeared, rather than give you the satisfaction.
Briefly And Fatally 