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Dr. Chase A. Thompson
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Anatoli Bugorski and the Splitting Headache. (Hit in the Face with a Particle Accelerator)
• 33 minEpisode 9: Anatoli Bugorski. Anatoli and the Splitting Headache. One more story to tell today in our mini series of scientific heroes who work in dangerous mediums and, like the last couple of episodes, today’s story is also a cautionary tale of sorts, but it’s a story of a mistake most of us won’t even have a chance to duplicate even if we wanted to. I’m looking forward to telling you about today’s subject, Anatoli Bugorski, but even MORE looking forward to the next few episodes when we dive into the primary sources - pre all of this societal polarization and vitriol - and learn in their own words what a Nazi is and what a Fascist is. What did each of those parties believe, what were their planks, and how did they behave? In a world where everybody who disagrees with you politically is a vile Nazi or Fascist, it might just be helpful to look up what each party was all about. That’s history-history, and a time period that is right in my wheelhouse, a few years before and after WW2. Sometimes science brushes so close to the edge that it leaves a scorch mark. Today’s story is about a man, unlike our other heroes of science, who escaped the flash “brighter than a thousand suns” ( Discover), even though it hit him square in the head. It’s also about how a human life can thread the needle between disaster and miracle and keep on going, to finish a PhD, show up to work, and survive. This is the tale of Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, “a Russian retired particle physicist … known for having survived a radiation accident in 1978, when a high-energy proton beam from a particle accelerator passed through his head.” Yep, you heard me correctly. Essentially, he is the Phineas Gage of the nuclear era. And if you don’t know about Gage…look him up. Ouch! We start in Protvino, in the Russian SFSR, at the Institute for High Energy Physics. Bugorski “worked with the largest particle accelerator in the Soviet Union, the U-70 synchrotron” (..). On July 13, 1978, he walked into the kind of malfunction that turns a routine check into legend: “he was checking a malfunctioning piece of equipment when the safety mechanisms failed. Bugorski was leaning over the equipment when he stuck his head in the path of the 76 Giga electron volt proton beam” (..). He didn’t really feel pain as such, at least not immediately. Instead, he saw light. Specifically, he “reportedly saw a flash ‘brighter than a thousand suns’” In that instant the beam “passed through the back of his head, the occipital and temporal lobes of his brain, the left middle ear, and out through the left-hand side of his nose” The dose in the exposed pathway: “200,000 to 300,000 roentgens Discover puts the energy another way: “2,000 grays … on the way in, and … 3,000 grays by the time it left. A dose of around 5 gray can be lethal to humans” (Discover). How do those two things cohere, considering that Bugorski didn’t die? I’ve no idea. Like Homer Simpson, I’m no nuclear scientist, and unlike Homor Simpson, I don’t even work at a nuclear power plant. Somehow, someway, Bugorski “understood the severity of what had happened, but continued working on the malfunctioning equipment, and initially opted not to tell anyone” (..). That detail feels very Soviet, very scientist, and very human: finish the job, then process the catastrophe. It reminds me of the time I was bit by a racoon…..And, you know what? Don’t expect anybody to make a podcast in the future about my raccoon incident…Bugorski’s story is a billion times better. Let’s talk about What Particle Beams Do (And Don’t Do) to Flesh There’s a reason we generally don’t put our hands in beams. When I was a kid, if I heard my mom say that once, I heard her say it a million times. As The Atlantic frames the broader thought experiment: “What would happen if you stuck your body inside a particle accelerator? The scenario seems like the start of a bad Marvel comic” (The Atlantic), according to the Atlantic, but a GOOD Marvel comic if you’re asking me. Accelerators “allow physicists to study subatomic particles by speeding them up in powerful magnetic fields and then tracing the interactions that result from collisions” (The Atlantic). But that neat chalkboard world becomes very real when “a beam of subatomic particles traveling at nearly the speed of light meets the flesh of the human body” (The Atlantic). Discover says it plainly: “protons are still very much physical objects, and when you take trillions of them and force them through something as delicate and complex as a human cell, the collisions tend to tear biological structures apart” (Discover). Radiation harms by “breaking apart chemical bonds that hold DNA and other cellular components together” (Discover). With enough energy, “cells are unable to duplicate and begin to die, leading to organ failure” (Discover). And yet, unlike fallout or whole-body exposure, “the particle beam was narrowly focused,” meaning “only his brain received any exposure to the radiation, keeping the damage concentrated to a single area” (Discover). That narrowness, Discover suggests, may be part of why he lived: “He may have just been lucky, and the beam missed important areas of his brain, or perhaps proton beams affect the body differently than other sorts of radiation” (Discover). Reading the Discover article, I wonder if they realize just how important the brain is. I don’t feel like Bugorski got lucky because the particle accelerator beam only hit him in the face. The Atlantic zooms out: this kind of radiation—protons at these energies—“is a rare beast indeed” Almost no one ever encounters a dose like this in such a focused line. When they do, it’s usually deliberate and medical: “Particle accelerators can deliver targeted doses of radiation to cancer patients, a process known as proton beam therapy … Those doses are around 300 times smaller than the one Bugorski sustained” (Discover). So cancer-destroying proton beams are 300 times smaller than the beam that smacked our guy in the head. Wild! So no, this isn’t an origin story for Super-Anatoli. As the Discover article cracks: “Were this a comic book, Bugorski would certainly be endowed with fearsome powers … As it is, he’s probably just happy to be alive” One possibility they didn’t consider is that Burgorski did, in fact, develop superpowers, but like Superman with his glasses on, he is clever enough not to advertise his powers to the rest of the world. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Back to 1978. Like with Slotin, Kelley, and Daghlian, Bugorski’s Doctors expected a death watch. “They expected him to die, but he survived with severe but non-fatal injuries” (..). The physical toll was immediate and visual: “The left half of Bugorski’s face swelled up beyond recognition and, over the next several days, the skin started to peel, revealing the path that the proton beam had burned through parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue underneath” (..). Discover’s article version is also a tad grisly but concise: “his skin blistered and peeled off where the beam had struck” (Discover). Permanent damage for Bugorski coincided with the beam’s route through his head. He “completely lost hearing in the left ear, replaced by a form of tinnitus” (..). “The left half of his face became paralyzed due to the destruction of nerves” (..). “He was able to function well, except for occasional complex partial seizures and rare tonic-clonic seizures.” Or as Discover translates the neurology: “in the long-term, Bugorski suffered for a time from both petit mal and grand mal seizures and found that he became more easily mentally fatigued” (Discover). One other side effect: Apparently, The paralyzed side of his face never aged, but if you are dealing with wrinkles and looking for a fountain of youth style medical cure here, you might want to verify that in person before sticking your body into a particle accelerator. What about his mind? Did he lose his wits? Most reports note that “There was virtually no damage to his intellectual capacity, but the fatigue of mental work increased markedly” (..). After the accident, Discover magazine reports that Bugorski “nevertheless went on to earn his doctorate, and even returned to work at the same facility where his accident occurred” (Discover). The Atlantic underscores the same improbable normalcy: “Despite having nothing less than a particle accelerator beam pass through his brain, Bugorski’s intellect remained intact, and he successfully completed his doctorate after the accident” That’s pretty impressive, and puts him in a tier of one. I’m pretty sure he’s the only guy in history to earn a doctoral degree after taking a million-mile fastball from a particle accelerator to the face. Impressive. After the accident, he “continued to work as a physicist … eventually becoming the experiment coordinator for the same particle accelerator by which he was injured” (..). In an institutional world that can sometimes be quick to sideline, that’s a quiet triumph. The human story here runs on two tracks: private medical vigilance and public silence. .. again: “Because of the Soviet Union’s policy of maintaining secrecy on nuclear power-related issues, Bugorski did not speak publicly about the accident for over a decade” (..). Meanwhile, he “continued going to the Moscow radiation clinic twice a year for examinations and to meet with other nuclear accident victims” (..). In that circle, he was “described as ‘a poster boy for Soviet and Russian radiation medicine’” (..). Money and medication brought their own hard edges. “In 1996, Bugorski applied unsuccessfully for disability status to receive free epilepsy medication” (..). It’s not
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