What if I looked straight at an eclipse of the sun?
You’ve probably heard that staring at the sun is bad for your eyes. The reason you’ve heard this is that people who stare at the sun can go blind. Here’s why. When you were a kid, you may have performed the trick where you lit paper on fire using the sun and a magnifying glass. The light of the sun is so strong that, if you concentrate it with a lens, you can actually start a fire. In your eye, you have a lens. If you stare at the sun, this lens concentrates a spot of sunlight on your retina, and it burns it too. The light is so intense that it kills cells on your retina. So much hype surrounds staring at a solar eclipse because, on a day-to-day basis, most folks know better than to stare up at the sun. The problem with a solar eclipse is that it’s an extremel
