…and someone shielded the recording electronics of a 360° camera and shoved it through there.
Apparently, the electrons interact with the DNA of biological pathogens enough to render is unusable, while materials are unaffected.
I assume the visual noise before and after passing through the veil of electrons is from the electrons interacting with stuff and being reflected at random angles.
Funny thing: You can directly see the shielding effect of the camera casing itself by the stark difference of noise between its two recording planes that switches as it passes underneath the beam.