There are actually different types of particle accelerators... what kind are you talking about?
I have a friend who is a particle physicist. He runs projects at Fermilab, CERN and in the Nutrino thing in Japan. He once told me this story about a Russian scientist who stuck his head into a particle beam:
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Originally Posted by copied from Wikipedia
Anatoli Bugorski is a Russian scientist who was involved in an accident with a particle accelerator in 1978.
He was working on the maintenance of a Soviet linear accelerator, when, due to a failed safety mechanism, he was able to stick his head in one part of the accelerator chamber while the proton beam was running. The left half of his face swelled up beyond recognition, and over the next several days started peeling off, showing that the proton beam (moving at about the speed of sound)had burned through parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue underneath. Amazingly, he has survived to this day: he is able to function perfectly well, save the fact that he has occasional petit mal seizures and very occasional grand mal seizures. The left half of his face was frozen, due to the destruction of nerves, and does not age.
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