A particle accelerator is not some kind of

evil super villain torture device.

"You may fire when ready."

A particle accelerator is used for health,

safety,

discovery,

and for learning more about our Universe.

You can't see what it does, but,

you can feel it.

The question is,

can you survive its effects?

Chances are you've probably already been

exposed to accelerated particles before!

So how do you feel?

From X-rays

to airport security,

treating waste water and

killing cancer cells,

particle accelerators continue to

push the boundaries of human potential.

They might even hold the secret to time travel!

But with great power,

comes great responsibilty...

and the potential for

some pretty serious accidents.

In 1978, Russian scientist Anatoli Bugorski

was checking in on the

malfunctioning U-70 synchrotron

which, at the time, was

the Soviet Union's largest particle accelerator.

Of course, in those days,

"checking in" meant putting your head in there

and taking a good, hard look for yourself.

It's hard to imagine what

Bugorski might've been looking for,

since you can't physically see

accelerated particles.

They move nearly as fast as the speed of light.

When a safety mechanism failed,

sending a radioactive beam of protons

through Bugorski's head,

the blinding flash of light he saw,

"brighter than a thousand suns,"

according to him,

wasn't actually a burst of accelerated particles.

That intense light was the result of

76 billion electron volts

being rammed through Bugorski's skull.

For comparison,

the standard proton therapy cancer treatment

is no more than 250 million electron volts,

firing at a speed 300 times less

than what Bugorski got.

And yet, Bugorski didn't feel any pain.

The whole thing happened in an instant.

But once it was over,

Bugorski's face immediately started swelling.

He was rushed to the hospital,

where doctors told him

he wouldn't live for much longer.

But Bugorski is still alive today.

Half of his face is paralyzed,

he's deaf in one ear, and,

he suffers from epilepsy.

But aside from that, he lives a pretty normal life.

So, are particle accelerators safe to touch?

Not quite.

By today's standards,

the U-70 synchrotron that

shot through Bugorski's head

is actually a very weak particle accelerator.

In comparison,

the Large Hadron Collider,

which is the world's largest and

highest-energy particle collider,

fires at about 200 times

more power than the U-70.

This thing shoots high-energy beams

around a ring that's 27 kilometers (17 mi) long,

at a speed that's equivalent to

circling the world 7.5 times per second!

The purpose of this is to produce

high-energy collisions

that will recreate the same conditions

that followed the Big Bang

that created our universe.

These collisions might create new particles

which we've never seen before,

offering up clues to how you, me, our world,

and everything else came into existence.

Do you really want to get your head

in the way of that?

Check your ego before you hurt yourself, and,

don't interrupt a particle collider

from uncovering more mysteries.

For all we know, time travel is possible!

But can you imagine how weird it would be

to meet a time traveler?

Well, that's a story for another WHAT IF.