Pop went the weasel and down went the Large Hadron Collider

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

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

Authorities say the incident was one of several small glitches that will delay plans to restart the $4.4 billion collider by a few days.

Marsollier says Friday that the weasel died — and little remains of it.

Officials of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym CERN, have been gearing up for new data from the 27-kilometre (17-mile) circuit that runs underground on the Swiss-French border.