Particle Man, Particle Man
Let's hear a story about Particle Man
Not everything goes according to plan
Particle Man
Particle accelerators are large atom smashers that
accelerate particles to getting close to the speed of light.
Large magnets force the particles around loops up to 17 miles (27 km) long to get them to
these stupidly high speeds.
The Soviet Union had one such atom smasher – the mile-long (1.5 km) U-70 synchrotron
in Protvino, Russia, and when it was built in 1967 it was the highest energy accelerator
in the world.
However, on one fateful day in 1978 the accelerator’s detector wasn’t working correctly.
Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski decided to find out the problem, which involved putting his
head into the particle accelerator channel.
This wasn’t an uncommon thing to do though, repairs had to be made on a regular basis,
and there was a system in place to warn if the accelerator was in operation or not.
What he didn’t know was the automatic door lock that should prevent him entering the
accelerator had been disabled during a previous experiment.
There was another failsafe – a warning light that warned if the accelerator was in operation,
but the bulb had burnt out.
He’d called the accelerator operator to tell them he’d be entering in 5 minutes,
but he entered earlier than that.
Unbeknown to Anatoli, he was about to put his head into a live particle accelerator!
The beam of protons 2-3mm (1/8”) across entered though the back of his head, went
through his brain and exited through his nose.
He felt no pain but saw a flash “brighter than a thousand suns”.
He knew instantly what had happened but chose to tell no one, continuing his work for the
rest of the day, apparently unaffected.
Being a particle physicist, he knew he likely had a radiation dose up to 300,000 rads.
A dose of 1,000 rads is enough to kill someone, so as he worked, he monitored his health,
expecting it to go south rapidly.
Overnight his face swelled up so he was unrecognisable.
There was a scar on the back of his head where the protons had entered, so the following
morning he presented himself to doctors, telling them just what had happened.
At first they didn’t believe him, then they were horrified, and then they rushed him to
a special clinic in Moscow for victims of radiation poisoning.
Few of the doctors there expected him to live.
Although the protons had burnt a hole through his brain, it seems it had been such a focused
and charged beam it had cauterised all wounds as it passed, and radiation exposure, although
high, had only affected a very small part of his body.
He’d also been fortunate that it hadn’t passed through the more vital centres of the brain.
The swelling receded, but one side of his face was left paralyzed, he would have
frequent seizures, got easily tired and he lost hearing in his left ear, replaced by
a form of tinnitus.
However, his intellect remained and after 18 months he returned to work.
Anatoly himself believes his fitness and a love of sports helped him get through the ordeal.
With such high secrecy in the Soviet Union, his story was classified, and the world didn’t
get to hear of it until after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
He applied for state aid to help cover his ongoing medical costs, but Russia doesn’t
have a clear category for “particle accelerator accident”.
The only way to get compensation was to apply for Chernobyl radiation disaster relief, even
though he had nothing to do with it.
However, even then he was denied compensation for an accident that wasn’t really his fault.
Anatoly continues to live out his retirement in Protvino.
He went on to complete his doctorate that he began before the accident and is an amazing
example of beating something that seems like it’s not survivable.
Particle accelerators continue to grow.
The £6B ($9B USD, €7.5B, $ AUD) Large Hadron Collider near Geneva crosses the French/Swiss
border 4 times!
Anatoly’s U-70 Proton Synchrotron is actually still in use and continues to perform important
physics to help us understand our universe.