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Wiki trivia: Guy sticks his face in a particle beam
Syd Midnight 11/23/08, 16:57 | 
0 | In honor of the dormant CERN LHC, I just noticed this in my bookmarks, Anatoli Bugorski. I expect you to just click the link, but basically he was fuckin' around in an old soviet particle accelerator where performance was prized over safety and accidentally sat up and caught the beam right in his head.
Someone else can do the math, I'm guessing it was about 1/100th as powerful as the LHC beam (to a power of 10), then again it's also impossible for you stick your face in the LHC beam (safety measures, vacuum etc).
He was pretty well fucked up, but it turns out that the brain is one of the more radiation-resistant organs because its cells aren't really meant to reproduce, so he survived with plenty of injuries. And he later got married and had kids so he couldn't have been too hideously comic book fucked up. But then again, if a physicist can't get laid with a story like that...
It's not too different than what I'd imagined, the interesting thing I hadn't expected (but now seems obvious) is that the damage isn't from the beam itself, but all the quantum shrapnel thrown off from the beam annihilating the subatomic particles in the human meat. If I understand it correctly it had an exit-wound kind of effect.
Just wanted to share that amazing tidbit. So remember, cross the beams if you must, but don't get them anywhere near your head.
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