Question: Have you ever been tempted to place your hand in the Particle accelerator. If so what could happen

Baptiste Ravina answered on 18 Mar 2020:

This is a question that comes up often, it seems… 🙂 First, I’ll let you google the story of Anatoli Bugorski, who actually got a particle beam shot through his head and somehow survived! (https://curiosity.com/topics/anatoli-bugorski-the-man-who-put-his-head-inside-a-particle-accelerator-and-survived-curiosity/)

If you were to put your hand inside the LHC, which fortunately we can’t because the tube carrying the protons is hermetic, you would be hit by a beam containing billions of high energy protons. If you do the maths, it would be similar to getting hit by a bullet fired from a low- to mid-velocity rifle. But the big difference is that instead of it being spread across a few milimeters like a bullet, the impact would be highly concentrated (a few micrometers). So the damage would both be smaller and more intense.

It would cause pretty intense burning, and possibly you could feel the effects of radiation. Another consideration is that the reason the tube carrying the protons is hermetic is because it must be kept under very important vacuum conditions. The vacuum is in fact more intense than that found in outer space! So the usual troubles with vacuum would be felt: freezing of the surface skin, expansion of blood vessels and water inside the cells vaporising… it wouldn’t feel good.

The take-home message here is simple: don’t do that!