In 1978, while inspecting a faulty detector inside the Soviet Union’s most powerful particle accelerator, physicist Anatoli Bugorski was struck in the head by a proton beam traveling close to the speed of light. Amazingly, Bugorski remains alive to this day, and while government secrecy prevented details of his medical assessment from being leaked, researchers have now reconstructed the path that the high-energy ray blazed through his brain. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The incident occurred on a summer’s day at the Institute of High Energy Physics in Protvino, which housed a 1.5-kilometer (0.9-mile) long particle accelerator called the U-70 synchrotron. Apparently, several safety features failed as the 36-year-old s

See Full Page