TIL fermilab had a ferret to find obstructions in their particle accelerator in the 1960s
TIL fermilab had a ferret to find obstructions in their particle accelerator in the 1960s
A furry critter and its four-mile trek through an accelerator pipe comes to the lab's rescue in its early days.
Following a tragic exposure to a burst of gamma radiation, that ferret ended up mutated and horribly deformed, and later went on to get elected to the House of Representatives under the moniker Matt Gaetz.
This is offensive to ferrets, who are both more dignified and smell better than Gaetz.
They're also significantly less likely to engage in pedophilia.
Also smarter.
Ferrets fucking love dark tunnels.
We got our first ferret back in 86 on a whim. Brought her back home and basically let her run free. It took her an astonishingly short amount of time to find her way into the sump-pump drainage pipes running around the foundation of our house. She shimmied in and out like it was nothing.
We learned all about ferret proofing very quickly after that.
Even though I have zero practical usability for it and a near zero chance of even encountering a ferret, I'd still like to learn more about ferret proofing.
Any hole is a goal - a ferret most likely
I second that ^
Seems kinda crazy that they'd get obstructions in the first place. How's stuff even get in there to begin with?
According to the article, it didn't, but they didn't know that when they bought the ferret. The particles weren't making it through and they didn't know why, so they employed a ferret to explore the tube. When she made it around, they knew there was no obstruction, and realized they had a different problem.