Light “brighter than a thousand suns” should have caused severe actinic retinitis to have blinded him permanently.

Then the description of the”path of the beam” seems more like a description of science fiction.

Then “the insides of his head continued to burn” for another two years is either inaccurately stated or is another attempt at science fictioning.

Finally the site of paralysis is on the wrong side.

Now, I could very easily be totally wrong about this, so don’t flame me for trying to pass myself off as an expert, because I’m not. I’m just trying to combine what’s already been said in the comments.

FYI, beam energy can be measured in syncrotrons by detecting the frequency (number of times proton bucket is flying around the ring per second) and beam position within the beam pipe, to figure out the trajectory length of the bucket. Simple (quantum mechanics) math would than produce beam energy as accelerated.

The same article claims however, that the radiation he received was 200 000 rentgen at entrance and 300 000 rentgen at exit. Not sure how it ranslations to radiation dose in Gy. I agree, the dose of 5-6 Gy localized is not lethal.

Another thing is like Semi said a proton beam would have to be very slow to only be the speed of sound. Speed of light would be more accurate.

As an answer to your question Sasha, the exact energy of the beam is determined by the amount of Voltage applied to create the beam in the first place, which is manually controlled and documented by who ever was running the machine.

http://www.tpp89.ru/metropol/Personalnyi_cernobyl_anatoliy_bugorskogo. html

is a link to the Russian version of the story where some facts are provided (although some inconsistencies exist there as well)

In this case, the beam was deflected into a small branch for experiments in air (not in vacuum). The previous experiment was not at a high dose, therefore, according to the article, the door interlocks were turned off. (NOTE: door interlocks - are mechanisms that detected when the door is opened and shut off all system that are needed to systain beam in that branch). The warning lights were not flashing because a light bulb burned out. Anatoli called accelerator control to disable beam on that beamline in 5 minutes, but arrived a bit early. Lights were not flashing indicating the beam has been shutoff. Door interlocks were bypassed, so he entered the room. and bend down to check his equipment?

The beam was pencil-sharp (2.3 mm - diameter) and entered the back of the skull exiting around left front nostril. Lucky for him it did not go through any critical organs and was probably of a high energy, which also helped him not depositing all of its energy at the Bragg Peak. (Official quote from his medical records and handicap ID are provided in the article). He felt it immediately but, finished his job, made an entry in the log and went home. In the morning, he went to the hospital with a swollen side of the face. He is fully recovered (except for seizures) and has small spots on entrance and exit of the beam. It is unclear, though probably using the very chamber (dosimeter) he was working on, how do they know the precise dose deposited into him?
Another question: what was the energy of proton beam? At 70 MeV, the depth of the Bragg Peak (a spot where all protons release their energy) is at about 3cm. At 250, it is located at around 30cm deep in water equivalent. In other words, if the energy of the protons was higher than 250 MeV, most of the particles would just fly through his head with very little interactions. Anything less, the entire energy would be deposited somewhere inside his head.

People who understand neither particle accelerators nor proton beams probably shouldn’t be commenting so enthusiastically.

It’s true that Particle Accelerators rely on supercool conditions and extreme electromagnetism, those conditions are required to achieve precise scientific experimentation. Shooting someone in the face with a supercharged stream of protons, however, doesn’t require much precision… relatively speaking.

As long as the magnets were active, there doesn’t seem to be much issue with the story, from my understanding.

Also, someone asked if ‘time dilation’ was the reason his face supposedly stopped aging. I got bored with reading, so I apologize if someone already asked this but, no. Half of his face would need to sustain near light speed for such things to happen. And THAT, I am confident, he would not survive.

How familiar are you with thinking critically? Not very, I assume. The very fact some of us were asking for an authoritative source for confirmation obviously means our few articles didn’t make us the authority.

The key here was information. Rather than relying solely on wiki or on the occasional article, some of us were asking for more information to supplement what we already know. Until then, the story remained ‘unconfirmed’. Not absolute BS, and not swallowed hook-line-sinker. Just null until we had more info.

For all those claiming ‘it’s not fake’, not one of you seemed to be able to provide answers to the apparent issues. Justin, who had that information, was able to do more by explaining that than by acting like a gullible twat who thinks if the internet says it, it must be real.

A little lesson in skepticism, people.

As you were.

Athon

Athon

Many people have said that sticking your head into the beam path would involve breaking the necessary vacuum. This is not true. Particle accelerators use magnets to accelerate charged particles to near light speed, and a vacuum is required for this. But in many cases the experiment does not take place inside the beam pipe. Instead, the beam pipe runs right up to the face of the experiment’s target. Then the already-accelerated particles exit the sealed end of the pipe, fly through a small amount of “outside” air and into the target chamber (type of target chamber depends on the experiment). If I remeber the story correctly, Bugorski was checking on something in his experiment’s target chamber, not on the particle accelerator when this accident occured.

1. If a proton beam can be shot at someone’s head to help treat a tumor, then a proton beam can exist in a non-vacuum, and, at least for a while, outside the confines of a collimating magnetic field.

2. Might older, lower energy accelerator technology than currently being used not have required a vacuum to reach the energies at which it was designed to work?

3. Ditto on the magnetic field…

This seems to be a pretty well corroborated story. Instead of assuming it’s wrong (”sounds fishy”), find out how it could be right. Might learn something (like the guy who thinks the LHC is the only particle accelerator in the world).

It’s not a matter of whether the magnets form a circuit or not. It’s a matter of the magnets controlling the beam to begin with. From what I understand of particle accelerators (enough to know the fundamentals, but not enough the particulars), the magnets keep charged particles moving. It’s not as simple as just opening a hatch and watching them whiz by.

Second of all, to accelerate the particles, they can’t have large molecules of air bumping into them. Again, they require a vacuum. Opening a ‘hatch’ of any sort would simply let air in. So before we talk about ‘misinformation’ or ‘retards’, how about addressing the basics and providing some facts which address the questions.

Having done a little more homework on the matter, it’s looking less likely than ever to me that he stuck his head into a beam of accelerated protons. More possible was him putting his head where it shouldn’t be - outside of the chamber - and copping a dose of radiation from particle collisions (if anything at all).

Again - any informed answers would be most appreciated.

Athon

How come no Nobel award for him? silly bugger. Please try to keep people like him away from the LHC. It’s an irresistible target for such people to dangle or stick in various bits of their anatomy.