On Tuesday, 3 July 2018 5:57:36 AM AEST Lindsay W via luv-talk wrote:
I am curios to find out why you wish to know this. The eye has a remarkable ability to recover from bright light source so to damage the retina enough to achieve total blindness one would need to look into a bright light source (such as an arc light at close range) for quite while, and this is likely to take a lot of will power. And believe me there is a distinct such an injury is VERY likely to be EXTREMELY painfull. DEFINITELY NOT RECOMMENDED.
To damage an area of the retina large enough to cause total blindness would take some time. To damage a small section that can significantly limit visition (especially if the victim looked at the source) would take much less time. Apparently a good portion of LASER pointers sold in Australia don't meet Australian safety standards and can vaporise a chunk of retina rapidly. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5754573/ The above link has a meta-study of LASER related eye injuries. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-a-pocket-laser-damage/ The above is an article for people with less scientific background. It also has some helpful advice like "you shouldn't force a stare at a laser, just like you shouldn't stare at the sun or any bright light source" and "Do not shine it onto a mirror or mirror-like surface. Do not look at the beam through binoculars or a microscope". A final note, please be careful when making household pets chase the LASER dot. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/