What Looking at an Eclipse Actually Does to Your Eyes

Hello and for business, this is Anton, and if you're from certain parts of Europe, you potentially have just experienced once-in-a-generation type of an event, this, the total solar eclipse.

And the thing is, every time this type of an event happens, there is a rather fascinating social and biological phenomenon that seems to occur shortly after the moon passes in front of the sun. Okay, technically there are quite a lot of different phenomena, some which we'll discuss in videos in the

description, but today we're going to discuss one particular phenomenon that might be affecting you as well, assuming you watch this in real time. And you can sort of see it visualized right here.

It's visible as these very strange search spikes on Google following major solar eclipses in various locations. And here we have the 2017 and the 2024 spike, and almost a vertical spike of people typing things like, "My eyes hurt, eye damage, and even did I go blind?" And surprisingly, this happens

like clockwork, and it's happening right now as well. And that's because thousands and thousands of people suddenly rush to Google gripped by a sudden panic that they permanently damaged their vision because they basically pulled a Donald Trump. They looked at the eclipse without protection, or possibly used something

that was not really protecting them, such as actually what I did back in the days by using an empty CD in front of the sun, thinking that somehow it's actually going to make things better.

Uh, and FYI, yeah, don't do that either. I actually got pretty lucky my vision did not get worse. And so the question is, what exactly is happening here, and is this actually going to lead to permanent eye damage, or are our bodies just playing some kind of a trick on us, and people that are searching for this might

actually be okay? And so to understand this, we basically need to separate public anxiety from actual medical facts, and look at some of the detailed studies published in major medical journals, diving into this somewhat bizarre topic that seems to reoccur every few years. And it's actually going

to be very relevant very soon in 2027 when planet Earth is going to experience one of the longest eclipses ever seen.

And I can only imagine even more people are going to be doing this followed by the Google search afterwards. And so in this video we're going to discuss exactly what's possibly happening with most people, but also discuss a condition called solar retinopathy and look at what science has about

recovering from this damage. But I guess let's start with something that should be obvious. Do not look at the sun, which I guess is kind of ironic because that's something we constantly hear from various public health agencies and especially before a major eclipse. But human curiosity is a very powerful

force, which is why some people, actually a lot of people, still do. But for a lot of these public health agencies, there's always a hazard that because of this the emergency departments might become completely overwhelmed because many people might suddenly have major issues with their