Humans are not to look directly in to the sun. What will happen if one does?

My mom said you will go blind.

You will burn your retinas if you look long enough. Which was why the sun watch on most navy ships during WW2 was limited to 10 minutes an hour with protective lenses.

You can go blind, I did from something similar once. It’s extremely damaging for your eyes. You shouldn’t look directly at it even wearing glasses.

If you do look, you can enjoy photokeratitis.
You can read what happened to my eyes here.

You can burn your retina.

I never wore sunglasses and always had perfect vision. Now, at 50, the eye doctor says I have early cataracts. (50 is not that old by the way!) They are in the early stages and to small to remove, but the sun can be really damaging and I never did look right at it.

Not only will looking directly at the sun burn your retinas, but so will looking directly at the sun’s reflection. Some people especially children find watching the reflection on a lake/ocean mesmerizing.

Check out “Eat the Sun” (video), The Earth was Flat (book), or Google “HRM protocols.” These all document the practice of sungazing. The subject in the video did burn his retinas, but suffered no other adverse affects as far as I know.

@XD Maybe he just hasn’t suffered…yet.

Here

It’s not a literal “burning” of the retina that happens, since heat isn’t that much of a factor in the damage. The damage is photo-chemical in nature. There’s a layer of the retina called the retinal pigment epithelium that is very highly loaded with dark pigment; it looks almost black (you can see it in the upper left of this picture of a calf’s dissected eye). It’s function is to protect the light-sensitive cells underneath from excessive light.

When you look at a source of intense light long enough, the photo-chemical reaction with these pigment cells (the absorption of high-energy UV by the pigment) destroys them, leaving a small yellow spot in that otherwise black layer. All of the other layers of the retina seem to be unharmed. Most crucially, the receptor cells don’t seem to get damaged, which is why full recovery is usually possible. That yellow lesion eventually fades.

I thank you all for answering my question!
@thorninmud Thank you especially, your answer was what I was after, an explanation of what happens with/in the eye!

We’ve had similar threads @rebbel Here’s one where what happens was answered

You can go blink. My grandmother lost the sight in one eye looking at an eclipse directly.

The harmful UV rays from the sun can be dangerous as you could get cataracts.
You can also destroy your photoreceptor cells which are on the retina.

Correction: blind not blink.

You eventually see Ra.