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.
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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.
Although 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 lies by liars. 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 kind of thing failing. 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."