Slashdot Mirror
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.
The one that really gave me a laugh was the one where he's looking at the eclipse and pointing to it, in case any of the White House staff forgot that the sun is in the sky and doesn't shine out of his ass.
https://timedotcom.files.wordp...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Save your flat-Earth conspiracy for another site, comrade. Everyone knows the world ended on December 21, 2012. The flat Earth we think we see if just a hologram to cover up the fact that the real flat Earth was destroyed by a stampede of cosmic elephants incited by one of them turtles a couple dozen levels down.
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.