Another Day At Work
During that fateful day, Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski was on duty at the Institute for High Energy Physics. During his shift, the Synchrotron U-70 suddenly stopped working – or so they thought. There was a part of the long piece of equipment that made the accelerator start malfunctioning, and Burgorski volunteered to inspect what was going on. The machine was equipped with certain safety mechanisms that will halt the proton beam inside as soon as someone goes inside the steely chambers of the machine. Unfortunately, they did not work in this situation. That was why Bugorski popped his head into the accelerator while it was still shooting heavy protons at head-spinning speeds!
Another Day At Work
Brighter Than A Thousand Suns
As expected, Bugorski could not believe what he saw. Initially, he saw light that he has since described to be “light brighter than a thousand suns.” In reality, this was the proton entering the surface of his face and coming through the other side. Although we discussed the improbability of a particle this size colliding with human bone and flesh, we have not talked about the nature of the radiation they make. Protons that have sufficient energy to travel close to the speed of light behave like the byproduct of large amounts of radiation. Such radiation is equivalent to what you would find in an x-ray but powerful by magnitudes. When you get an x-ray, it will be around five grays of radiation, whereas you will get two to three thousand in a particle accelerator!
Brighter Than A Thousand Suns
