When sunlight strikes our eye. Discoveries and Questions.

[arkain101]

This topic may and more likely will involve, and likely require the use of physics to explain the processes.

The Experiments:
I made what I think is a an important discovery. I saw one morning as I looked on the wall orange lines where the sunlight had passed through slits in the blinds over the window. I walked over and pulled up the blinds to observe what the day looked like. As I did I as faced looked directly at the tainted sun on a clear early morning as the sun was rising just over the horizon. This is something I realize that has dangerous consequences, and is to be avoided.

Anyway, I was not quite ready to wake up, so I went and laid back down and noticed the common spot in my vision a bright light source can leave.

I began doing some experiments with it while this abnormality remained in my vision and I noticed quite a few things. If I looked at something white, dark colors of the spot were 'seen'. If I closed my eyes to have a black background, brighter colors of the spot were seen.

So I started investigating what exactly was producing this spot.

a)I looked, at a mark on the, ceiling, a white bump of speckle, and watched the sun dot move around just slightly, around the bump on the ceiling and realized this was actually the unavoidable wobbling of my vision, as my brain was doing its best to focus the muscles in my eyes directly at one location.

b)I closed one eye, and compared the spot to the other eye, and they were different. I noticed that if I closed on eye, the intensity of the spot was suddenly increased, as my brain shifted focus to that eye. Quickly shifting from right eye open, left eye closed, to left eye closed to right eye open caused the sun spot to illuminate. This caused me to make somewhat of a conclusion that my brain had an almost instant reflex to change its focus from one eye to the other, depending on which eye had the most light. The illumination of the sunspot was seemingly caused by this reflex of attention. If I took my fingers, and quickly moved them over my eyes to create a shutter effect, it my brain would illuminate the spots. Such that, those spots became central to focus, while the rest of my visual field of my room became "compromised" by my fingers.

c)Then I closed my eyes and "looked at the sun spot". Now that is kind of a false thing to say, you can't look at it in the sense that you use your eyes, because they are closed. However, my brain (the part I am not conscious of) did not know the difference that my eyes were closed, it still "saw" retinal activity. I realized that I was could use the same ability in my brain to focus on that spot, with my eyes closed, as I would to focus on a spot draw on a peice of paper for example. So I tried to "hold" the image in the center of my vision with my eyes closed (there was a tendency for my eyes to drift slowly along, trying to follow the image as my brain thought it was moving, which I can only explain to our imperfect ability to focus on a single spot. This is where a sort of remarkable thing happened. As I knowingly tricked myself to imagine that this spot was a real thing, just like I was in a dark room watching a floating object, I was able to see detail in it. As I looked closer and closer, putting all my focus into it, I started to see what I can only describe as a small bundle of energy that went through a series of transformations as it began to slowly fade away.
As I observed the 'object' as if it was a real object it started to look almost exactly like this:







Although, it wasn't static, it was in a state of animation, generally blue/pink and purple in color. It was changing slowly.


The Conclusions..?
Now why do I think this is important? The question to ask here is:

What was I observing?

This was not just a defect in my observation of 'reality'. I have two assumptions.

1)I was observing the electrical activity that was remaining on my retina.
2)Or I was looking at consciousness itself. That is, my brain was forming the most simple blip of visual consciousness that it could.

But in any assumption we make, I think what we see is important for understanding, how our brains work.



The obstacles for investigation:

I would be interested to see this investigated further but there are obstacle's.
-We can't go staring at the sun all the time, to get a view of this string like world.
-even if we could find a way to do it safely, the spot we see is very small, and difficult to actually comprehend.



Solutions for investigation:
We need to discuss here the physics that occur as light passes into our eye from a source like the sun, and what it does to the actual cells and nerves in our retina.
Things to find out, Does it electrically charge the molecules? etc..

Then, is there a safe way to replicate these physics.

Understanding the actual chemistry, biology, physics, may help us ask or answer what are we seeing.
I consider it a very unique view into the very small to offer insight into these kinds of sciences. It is almost like a brain electron microscope.

[arkain101]

I am aware I make an assumption that other people will see the same thing, however, who really knows untill someone else actually experiments for themselves right? Although I don't recommend even trying, there is risk of permanent loss of vision. I happened to look at the sun by accident.

As the image faded away it ever so much transitioned into a more simpler form of rings and string like objects, of different colors, like green, red, and blue..

Are these classifiable as Flaw free visual components?

[CraigD]

Arkain, I think you should take or self-educate the equivalent of an introductory physiology of psychology course, focusing on visual perception. This is a very mature subject, yet full of surprising and counterintuitive findings and ideas, which I think you should thoroughly master before attempting speculation such as you’re making in this thread.

A couple of features of visual perception that I think bear on your ideas in this thread:

• The human eye – specifically the retina – does not sense light in the way that photographic film or electronic video sensors do, but rather sense changes in light. If you actually hold your eye perfectly still – something impossible without artificial techniques such as injecting the ocular muscles with a paralyzing drug – you’ll quickly seen nothing – that is, become blind. Because your brain’s sight centers compensate for them, you’re unaware of them, but your eye muscles involuntarily shift the direction of your eyes very slightly (about 0.3°) about 60 times a second, movements know as microsaccades.
• Afterimages, such as the one you describe from glancing at the rising sun, are not due to the absolute luminosity, but due to a difference in the activation of nearby retinal cells. Note that one can induce a strong, long-lasting afterimage by staring for about a minute at fairly dim, strong-contrast images, such as the ones in the linked wikipedia article, then closing your eyes.

Although various encyclopedic summaries such as the above linked wikipedia articles give decent overviews of the physiology of sight, it is, I think, a subject that should be studied in the structured, methodic way typical of a course or textbook.

[arkain101]

I agree Craig. You know, I actually recall reading a lot about that stuff before. I havn't been getting proper sleep for the passed few days, and when I get this tired it really throws me off for a curve ball..

Regardless of how it came across, I have not jumped to conclusions. It was just a very remarkable visual experience, that I guess I wanted to get out there to talk about. Honestly, I need to catch up on some sleep, because I wouldnt doubt my judgment is impaired. I'm sure this post will sound nutty to me when I read it a few days from now, rested up.. Hah.