You would think some rules in physics don’t need to be spelled out. “Don’t stick your head in the particle accelerator” seemed like it would have been on the list, but shit happens when you smash atoms in Russia.
Today’s Moment of Science… in Soviet Russia, particles accelerate YOU!
What exactly happens when we speed up particles and send them on a science roller coaster of doom? The TL;DR version of the story is that we hopefully find smaller particles and learn something new about how the world is glued together.
Though they experiment with other particles, a hydrogen atom is frequently the subject of analysis in colliders. Consisting of an electron and a proton, it’s stripped of its electron and the proton is propelled forward by a carefully controlled electric field. Magnets are used in steering the particles. The more energy a particle has, the stronger the magnetic field you need to bend its path.
When you torture particles with this much energy, you eventually get them to talk. Over fifty subatomic particles have been identified at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN alone, and there are still plenty of questions left to answer. Like… why’s gravity even a thing?
(Seriously, we still don’t quite have gravity figured out).
So, Anatoli Bugorski’s face.
Stories of nuclear fuckery in the USSR tend to involve gross negligence or lying liars who lie. In the case of the high powered proton beam that was shot through the left side of Bugorski’s face, no such fuckery took place. Everyone was communicating well, and the equipment was working as planned.
Had you there for a second, eh?
It started with an equipment malfunction at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino. At the time it was the highest energy accelerator in the world, and still holds the title in Russia. Bugorski, a 36 year old who hadn’t yet completed his PhD, went to investigate. A series of safety mechanisms to prevent, well, this sort of thing failed. I’m surprised there wasn’t some sort of “yell that you’re about to stick your head in the particle accelerator in case it’s somehow still on” protocol.
Bugorski popped his head into the pathway of the proton beam, likely thinking it was deactivated. Particles being propelled at nearly the speed of light shot through the back of the left side of his brain, out his left nostril. He’s described it as painless, but like seeing something “brighter than a thousand suns.”
He just went home that night, like any other day at the office.
Quickly, skin around the area that was hit peeled while his face swelled. It was determined that he’d received a blast of 2,000-3,000 grays (for the record, 5 grays can be a fatal dose of radiation). Their first thought was “oh shit son, you’re gonna die.” So it got confusing when he did not.
The best explanation other than “are you fucking kidding me?” Most of the particles just went straight through him. The theory underlying this is used in proton therapy, a type of radiation therapy. It takes advantage of our ability to measure exactly how far protons travel through a given medium, taking into account how highly energized the particles are. This allows us to precisely target tumor cells, leaving the surrounding area unharmed.
Anatoli Bugorski got an outsized blast of particle therapy, but the paradox of these particles traveling at nearly the speed of light? It sounds dangerous but because of all that energy, they mostly passed right on through him. I don’t recommend it, but if you’re going to get in the way of a high energy particle beam, go for the LHC.
(Uh, please don’t).
This didn’t leave him unscathed. If he’d gotten the full dose, I’m not sure if he would have had a head left to examine. Bugorski’s hearing is fucked in one ear, his facial muscles stopped working on the left side of his face, leaving him looking like he has some uneven Botox. He suffers from seizures. And because the Soviet Union had a habit of being like “radiation accident? What radiation accident?” Bugorski wasn’t allowed to talk about his accident for a decade.
He managed to finish his PhD, was able to carry on a career as a particle physicist, and is reportedly in decent health at 78 today (all things considered). He’s the luckiest unlucky guy to have survived a radiation incident in the USSR.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, leaving you with this quote from a Russian physicist: “particle physics is like two Soviet Fiats colliding to produce a bus and a Mercedes Benz 600. That’s the thing about high-energy physics: the total is different than the sum of its parts.”
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A friend of mine worked as a nuclear medicine tech at Stanford, and told this tale:
New doctor come in to learn the ropes, and get taken to see someone who has imbibed radioactive iodine to treat thyroid cancer. Friend holds up a Geiger counter which ticks away enthusiastically, and all the baby doctors back away. Friend says “Now you’ve all studied this and you know radioiodine is a very hot gamma emitter. Who here would prefer to be wearing a lead apron shield?”
All the baby docs want lead aprons.
Friend holds up a lead apron between the iodine patient and the Geiger counter, which greatly multiplies its ticking. Like a roar.
Friend says “Now when you studied radiation physics, you learned how energetic photons knock electrons off of heavy atoms producing secondary radiation, right?”
Duh.