CERN scientists explain what would happen if you put your hand in the LHC's beam (video)

Sure, concerns about the Large Hadron Collider creating a world-destroying black hole may have been more or less put to rest, but there's still plenty of pressing questions that remain unanswered. Like, what would happen if you put your hand in the beam? The folks from Sixty Symbols recently asked some physicists that very question and got some rather puzzled responses, so they went straight to CERN itself to get a definitive answer. You can see that in full after the break, but the short version is that it's something like the force of a moving aircraft carrier concentrated down to a laser-like one-millimeter-wide beam (accompanied by a wider beam of particles that would irradiate your entire body). Bad news. As they're quick to point out, though, actually getting anywhere near the beam is virtually impossible.

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CERN scientists explain what would happen if you put your hand in the LHC's beam (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 May 2012 14:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.