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What It Looks Like When You Fry Your Eye In An Eclipse (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Doctors in New York say a woman in her 20s came in three days after looking at the Aug. 21 eclipse without protective glasses. She had peeked several times, for about six seconds, when the sun was only partially covered by the moon. Four hours later, she started experiencing blurred and distorted vision and saw a central black spot in her left eye. The doctors studied her eyes with several different imaging technologies, described in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology, and were able to observe the damage at the cellular level.
"We were very surprised at how precisely concordant the imaged damage was with the crescent shape of the eclipse itself," noted Dr. Avnish Deobhakta, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, in an email to NPR. He says this was the most severely injured patient they saw after the eclipse. All in all, 22 people came to their urgent care clinic with concerns about possible eclipse-related damage, and most of them complained of blurred vision. Of those, only three showed some degree of abnormality in the retina. Two of them had only mild changes, however, and their symptoms have gone away. The young woman described in this case report, at last check, still has not recovered normal vision. For your viewing pleasure, The Verge has embedded several images of the woman's retinas in their report.
"We were very surprised at how precisely concordant the imaged damage was with the crescent shape of the eclipse itself," noted Dr. Avnish Deobhakta, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, in an email to NPR. He says this was the most severely injured patient they saw after the eclipse. All in all, 22 people came to their urgent care clinic with concerns about possible eclipse-related damage, and most of them complained of blurred vision. Of those, only three showed some degree of abnormality in the retina. Two of them had only mild changes, however, and their symptoms have gone away. The young woman described in this case report, at last check, still has not recovered normal vision. For your viewing pleasure, The Verge has embedded several images of the woman's retinas in their report.
Trust the folks who attempt to give you sage advice with no advantage to them. Ever have the misfortune of looking too long at a the arc of a welder's flash?
The funny thing is, funny strange not funny ha-ha, that it takes several hours to really pay dividends.
Yes indeed, battery acid and prayers to a God you didn't believe in this morning, either.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Why do people do this?
Why do people do this?
If you put a button on the wall, most people will ignore it.
If you then put up a big sign that says "Don't push this button" it will be pushed much more often,
DIY LASIK fail.
If it took this long to find a case of this and write a story about it.
Trump looking at the eclipse with no protection on his eyes.
http://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam...
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
"Dammit, I can't read my Darwin Award!"
Table-ized A.I.
There is geek/nerd psychological interest in this. Take it from the viewpoint of under standers looking at the world of believers, the look before you leap crowd vs the hesitate and lose. That itself is an interesting study in social genetics, how a society produces both, to solve social problems ie a problem presents itself and there is a believe structure to solve that 'style' of problem, the believers jump in without hesitation and try their luck with their belief, succeed and quick solution, fail and well, they are dead and the under standers who seek to understand the problem and understand the range of solutions to the range of problems within that style of problem, then work out a solution. That catch for under standers, they could perish, whilst they are attempt to properly understand and solve the problem, that could have been solved believers using a belief that happened to work.
From an under standers point of view, believers look really immature, those kids who you could never tell to not run with scissors as adults still running with scissors, well, at least until the trip and stab themselves once and how now created a belief on why it is bad to run with scissors. Those individuals will never look at the sun again without protective eye wear.
Social genetics at work, we evolve as a species and as a society not upon an individual basis. It's like saying psychopaths are really competitive but too many and they collapse the entire society and everyone dies out, including the psychopaths genes. The story is not news, it is an interesting idea to explore and understand. The empty main stream media news style is for believers, people who can and will believe anything, independent news and more importantly news analysis is for under standers because we need to understand how those morons work, else we are the ones those dumb fuckers burn at the stake or cut off our heads based upon idiotic beliefs, as in the past, so watch out for the future (how many of you want the apostate arseholes of the house of Saud ruling over you, would you be able to resist calling them a pack of egoistic shit heads and demand they be thrown out of power and punished for their crimes).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I burned my retina right in the center of both eyes. I have to look out of the corners of my eyes to see anything.
You mean voyeurs?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why do people do this?
Because women like that generally say Don't tell me what to do. I think they think it's something to do with the patriarchy.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Worth pointing out:
"She had peeked several times, for about six seconds, when the sun was only partially covered by the moon."
Uh, note that's what she said she did. We don't actually know how long she looked at the sun; she almost certainly underplayed how stupid she was when she talked to the doctor, since people usually do.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The energy required to damage this retina would have been enough to generate 0.0000001 BTC
Fixed.
Never happened. True story.
Don't be a retard. Don't look directly at the sun. Why do people do this?
Because more than 22/8.5 million (population of New York) are retards. Consider this, to be a Mensa member you must have a top 2% IQ. If you took all the Mensa members and took the top 2%, you'd have something like the best of the best (0.04%). If you took the top 2% of those again, you'd have freaking super-geniuses (0,0008%). In New York you'd have ~68 of them. Those equally far on the other end of the scale stare into the sun.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Perhaps she and those who did it should have tried to experiment with a magnifying glass before any attempt to stare at the sun. You might have tried this before when you were little.
If the magnifying glass started showing smoke on whatever it is focused in 6 seconds, staring at the sun at the time for the same duration could surely do the same to the eye.
Sir Isaac Newton stared into the sun a lot.
Yeah, and now he's dead!
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/07/...
Watching the celestial event outside her boyfriend's workplace, she noticed the changes around her, as it looked like dusk during the day. Payne looked up at the sun with her naked eye for a few seconds, but it was too bright.
She approached a woman nearby and asked whether she could borrow her glasses. The woman did not appear interested in viewing the eclipse and said she was "blind as a bat anyway." She told Payne she had borrowed them from a friend and agreed to let Payne use them.
Payne put on the glasses and looked up at the partial eclipse for 15 to 20 seconds. She didn't know what eclipse glasses were supposed to look like, but she remembered that the sun seemed particularly bright -- like looking at it with sunglasses on.
"But it didn't bother me, because I thought it would be a great experience to catch a solar eclipse the proper way," Payne told CNN.
She removed the glasses, returned them to the woman and left.
Six hours later, Payne noticed a weird dark spot in the center of her vision. She told her friends and family, but they told her to wait a day. After all, everyone had been outside looking up at the sun, and it was normal to feel "weird."
The next day, Payne lost vision in the center of her left eye.
So "a few seconds" is six, according to TFS. The borrowed glasses story sounds exactly like something someone would make up to shift blame from themselves, but we'll never know for sure. Besides, she admits she only sought glasses after staring at the sun bare-eyed proved "too bright."
So far, it's a nightmare, and sometimes it makes me very sad when I close my eyes and see it," Payne said. "It's embarrassing. People will assume I was just one of those people who stared blankly at the sun or didn't check the person with the glasses.
She is literally "one of those people," as she stared at the sun. She then borrowed glasses she couldn't verify as safe. I don't know what it means to "check the person with the glasses" but the fact that they were already blind might have been a red flag.
no, he did an interesting experiment on himself in his 20s and suffered temporary damage, mild solar scotoma
In that case I'm confident you'll be able to explain why certain stars are only visible from Australia and others from Europe. Or why a plane flight from Paris to New York takes about 8 hours Johannesburg to Perth takes only 9 hours when it should take at the very least twice or thrice as long on a flat earth.
So far nobody answered either question, so I'm really curious to hear the explanation.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do NOT look at the laser with the remaining good eye !!!
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Absolut Darwin Awards stuff this one
The NPR article is incorrect. She only looked at the sun without glasses for a few seconds. She found that uncomfortable. A woman nearby had eclipse viewing glasses but wasn't viewing the eclipse because she said she was blind as a bat anyway. So she asked to borrow the glasses.
She then viewed the sun for 15-20 seconds through those glasses, which they suspect is when the damage occurred. The glasses were probably fakes which didn't block all the rays of the sun. So this isn't a story about an idiot staring at the sun without glasses and destroying her vision as the NPR article implies. It's a story about some evil person destroying someone else's vision for life just so they could make a quick buck.
(Though I suppose it's possible she really is an idiot and made the whole thing up to hide her embarrassment.)
Even with the glasses, the amount of light that came in from around the frame of the glasses was painful. I had to wrap my hands around the glasses to even be able to look up. I couldn't imagine looking at the sun for even a millisecond. This girl was obviously on something besides just stupidity. Seeing totality for more than 2 minutes was one of the neatest sensory experiences in my life. Looking forward to the next one in a few years.
Scott
...it looks like you're an idiot.
-Styopa
A simple story that I think is an easier to understand explanation of the variety in risk tolerance.
I was fortunate enough to spend some time in Antarctica. Part of this time was minding a fuel hose about 10cm high, and I observed several groups of penguins negotiate the hose.
A pack of twenty would waddle along and hit the obstacle of the hose. They walk up and down along it a bit to see if they can get around.
Then two penguins jump the hose and walk on.
The rest of the pack, observing that those two are ok quickly jump over and continue on their way.
Except for three, who hesitate for some reason. They walk up and down again, they get increasingly agitated as the pack gets further away. Two eventually jump over. The last is running up and down the line, freaking out at being left behind and eventually trips and falls over the hose. Picks itself up and sprints after the pack.
Penguins display the same basic behaviour when confronted with any obstacle, like a group of people playing tourist or jumping into leopard seal infested water.
I never saw one stupid enough to stare into the sun though.
The back of the eye has no pain receptors.
That's amazing. You're sincere. You aren't tolling.
The power of the human mind to reject objectivity and only see the world in ways that reinforce their existing world-views is astounding.
You aren't just stupid, you are uncompromisingly stupid. And your stupidity is making you a danger to others.
The Earth is definitely not a sphere. It is, however, a spheroid. As for whether the Earth moves, it depends on your frame of reference. :-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Think of it as evolution in action...
Russian icebreaker ship crews have a story about the time they had to use explosives to clear a path through the ice. They drilled into the ice and planted explosives. Then they attached red detonation cord to those explosives and then retreated to a safe distance. Meanwhile a group of penguins curious about these new objects started exploring around them. Suddenly, there's a whoosh of ice and water as the explosives go off. Seconds later there are penguins flying hundreds of feet in every direction followed by plopping sounds as they fall back into the water.
I wonder if I'd be troll for saying:
Because men like that say I know what I'm doing. They think they know everything.
This is not about men and women, it's about the self entitled brat that my wife would call a stupid bitch because even when she was told not to look into the sun, she did. Doesn't mean all women, doesn't mean there isn't a male version. Interesting how some people project their insecurities into what they read and try to find a reason to be offended by the simplest explanation about what happened.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Interesting. I'm not dumb enough to try looking at the sun without eclipse glasses, but I assumed it would hurt.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Not even willing to defend your position? Ok, checked off as troll, moving on to the next flat earther.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What fried her eyes was the looking at the Sun. Sun will fry your eyes faster if there is no eclipse.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Why commercials have so many warning labels and disclaimers on them?
Can you get a gyroscope to show rotation of the Earth?
Yes, easily. Even the name comes from that use: gyro = rotation, scope=see. You just need a crappy but heavy (1+ kg) education grade one, a protractor, and 5-15 minutes depending on how big of a gyroscope you found.
A flat-earther will just point out that a crappy but heavy gyroscope has enough mass unbalance to precess, irrespective of the earth's rotation.
On the other hand, a high-precision navigation-grade gryo will quite easily measure earth rate. If the spin axis of the gyro is pointed toward the center of the earth, you will see 15.04 * cos(latitude) degrees/hour about the north/south level axis and 15.04 * sin(latitude) degrees/hour about the east/west axis.
Lieibniz also invented it, and his superior notation made it much more useful
If you read the literature, most eye damage from viewing solar eclipses is temporary and heals within 6 months. There are cases reported of suspected permanent loss in acuity, but they are rare and it's unclear whether there can be attributed to the solar exposure alone:
The upshot is: don't look at the sun directly and use protective eye wear when viewing solar eclipses, but also don't sensationalize the effects with terms like "frying your eyes" and don't panic.
When I was I guess about 13, there was a partial solar eclipse. One of my classmates pointed it out to us. I'm not sure how long we gazed at it but it was minutes rather than seconds. It didn't seem to noticeably harm anyone. Maybe it's a question of age.
If the sun were very low on the horizon, you might be ok. (You can look at the sunset, although you'll see afterimages). Otherwise, no, not minutes.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
When I first saw pics of him doing that, I checked to make sure I wasn't at onion.com. "That's too much of a Trump behavior stereotype to be real", I was thinking. The onion people were probably going, "Shit! reality scooped us again. Delete."
Table-ized A.I.
I am happy to be corrected, but you CAN stare at the total solar eclipse without glasses and everything will be just fine. It's the partial eclipses that you can NOT stare at. When the moon is completely blocking the sun, take the glasses off, it's BEAUTIFUL. I get the chills just thinking about how amazing it was.
To describe the beauty is hard, but it was like fractals dancing in the sky. It looked unworldly. One analogy I heard to describe the difference between 99% and 100% is: You bought tickets for the Super Bowl but you only made it 99% of the way there. You're sitting in the parking lot missing the entire show.
Joseph Elwell.
QED:
https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/mike-pence-nasa-touch.jpg
That's hilarious.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Amazing. Simply amazing that you dullards will bring up the President no matter what the topic is.
lol I know. They used to annoy me with all the oblama stuff, and now they annoy me will all the drumpf stuff.
As the article implies, there are plenty of retards in the world. Add in the few RussTrolls(tm) that get a ruble for their efforts, and we have what we have.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain