Anatoli Petrovitch Bugorski, a Russian scientist has the distinction of being the only person to ever stick his head into a running particle accelerator.

On July 13 1978, Burgorski a researcher at the institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, while checking a piece of malfunctioning equipment,accidentally stuck his head through the part of the accelerator that the proton beam was running through.

He reported seeing a flash that was " brighter than a thousand suns", but surprisingly felt no pain.

The beam measured 2000 gray as it entered his skull and 3000 gray when it exited. A "gray" is an SL unit of energy absorbed from ionizing radiation. One gray equals the absorption of one joule radiation energy by one kilogram of matter.This is commonly used in X-rays, an absorption of over 5 grays usually leads to death within 14 days. But, no one had ever experienced radiation in the form of a proton beam moving at the speed of light.

Shortly after this happened the left half of his face swelled up beyond recognition. He was taken to hospital and studied and was not expected to survive beyond a few days.

Although the skin where the beam hit him peeled off over the next few days and burned through his skull and brain tissue, Burgorski came through surprisingly well.

The most bizarre side effect is that the right half looks like a normal wrinkled old man's, while the left side has been frozen in time and looks like it did when the accident happened 19 years ago.

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