Comment on How else are ypu supposed to check for a beam on your accelerator?
alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 4 days agoHow strong were particle accelerators back then?
The only case I know of a dude sticking their head in a particle accelerator was in 1978. His head became quite swollen and he had radiation burns. He’s still alive at 82.
There’s also the Therac-25, that was pretty noticible.
MataVatnik@lemmy.world 4 days ago
If I remember correctly he was talking about physicist in the 30s, or one of those decades. Not sure when particle collider research started.
Psythik@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Well regardless they were either trolling, or you’re misremembering. Like the other person said, there’s only one known incident of this, and the beam fried part of his brain. Not something you would want to do just to check if the accelerator is working. You’d be completely brain-dead after the 2nd or 3rd time.
MataVatnik@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Found something, they don’t mention these physicist sticking their head in the beam but this probably points to the origin of the story.
I’m not misremembering what my professor said, I even remembered the years (1930s) correctly. To quote him more accurately he said “a lot of early particle physicist damaged their vision because they would stick their head on a particle accelerator to check if they had a beam going” and then he proceeded to mimick the motion of bobbing a head back and forth pretending to intercept a beam with his temples.