What happens when you stick your head in a particle accelerator!?

[Barrykgerdes]

Originally Posted by cfranks

A friend in High School (60 years ago!) didn't believe that Hydrogen Sulfide H2S was poisonous. He started the gas generating in a fume cabinet, stuck his head in and lowered the door down. Fortunately, when he lost consciousness he slipped out under the door and we found him on the floor. He recovered OK but left the school not long after!

Charles

We were never greedy with the H2S. We made sure it was shared with everyone.

Barry

[gary]

Originally Posted by CraigS

That's a sad one .. Daghlian was only 24 yrs old when he died, and Slotin was only 35 yrs.

Nasty way to go, too.

I notice they named an Asteroid in Slotin's honour in 2002.

Very sad.

Hi Craig,

Terribly young. Many of the Manhattan Project scientists were either students
of Oppenheimer's out of Berkeley or fresh from the University of Chicago where
Enrico Fermi had built the first reactor under the stadium at Stagg Field.
Their average age was somewhere around 29. In 1945, Oppenheimer himself was
only 41.

But then when one reflects that the average age of a B-17 crew member
during that same era had been somewhere around 20, it is a poignant reminder
of how different those times were compared to what we enjoy here today.

As another link with the Slotin story, recently Jen kindly made a post pointing
out the 1968 short documentary "Powers of Ten" which is available these days on YouTube.
See http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ght=Powers+Ten

Really worth watching for those who did not see it.

I pointed out in a follow-up post that the narrator in that documentary was none other than a
gentleman by the name of Philip Morrision, who had also worked on the Manhattan Project.
Morrison, who was only 30 years old at the time, was a very close friend of Slotin and
did much of the calculations after the accident to determine the
doses of radiation. He then stayed by Slotin's bedside in Los Alamos hospital
and watched his friend die.

To make one final segue, this time to astronomy, in 1959 Morrison co-wrote a seminal paper
which appeared in Nature entitled "Searching for Interstellar Communications",
This short paper is regarded as the beginning of the SETI program.
Though the reproduction is not the best, interested readers can find a scanned
copy of that original Nature article here - http://www.coseti.org/morris_0.htm
An article about the paper appears on the Planetary Society web site here -
http://www.planetary.org/explore/top...istory_02.html

Powerful minds indeed.

[CraigS]

Yes Gary;

Gifted by genetics;

Skilled through education;

Concealed during their research;

Killed by their passions;

Revered by history.

Leadership often manifests itself in mysterious ways, eh ?

Cheers

[jenchris (Jennifer)]

What happens when you stick your head in a particle accelerator!?

You end up like SASUP and want to put a turbo in a Jazz......

[GeoffW1 (Geoff)]

Originally Posted by mental4astro

I've got another one! I've got another one!

A bloke that should have known much, much better as a plumber for close to 50 years, he's fixing the gas outlet to our stove in the kitchen. Being really, really confident about his workmanship, the bugger tests the seal for leaks with HIS LIGHTER!

BOOOOM!

No eyebrows, no eyelashes and a new haircut! And a lot of swearing in Greek that would have made a sailor blush!

You could nominate him for a Darwin Award

http://www.darwinawards.com/

There's some tragi-comic stories in there

Cheers

[Analog6 (Odille)]

Your particles get accelerated?

I don't think I'll do it anytime soon.