On July 13, 1978, in Protvino, Soviet physicist Anatoli Bugorski was checking a broken U-70 accelerator.
The safety systems failed.
A high-energy proton beam passed straight through his head.
What did he see?
A flash brighter than a thousand suns. No pain.
He knew how serious it was. He kept working on the fault and, at first, told no one.
The beam entered at the back of his head, crossed the back and side parts of his brain, called the occipital and temporal lobes, passed through his left middle ear, and exited through the left side of his nose.
Its cross section was about 0.08 by 0.12 inches (2 by 3 millimeters). Its energy was 70 GeV.
Along that path, the tissue took an extremely high local dose of radiation.
Doctors expected him to die.
The left half of his face swelled beyond recognition. After a few days the skin peeled away and showed the track the beam had burned through his face, bone, and brain tissue.
He survived.
He went deaf in his left ear, with paralysis on the left side and epileptic seizures. His mind held: he finished his dissertation and kept doing research.
The narrow beam did severe damage without destroying the brain centers needed for awareness and thought.
It passed through his head.
And thought remained.
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