11 Craziest Things About Living In Space
9. They See Little Flashes Of Unearthly Light
When we began sending people into space, we knew that they would see things that no human being has ever seen before. The moon up close, the earth's thin atmosphere, the blue marble, hanging in space. One thing that we didn't bank on, is the bright flashes of light that regularly flew across the astronaut's eyeballs.
Pretty much every person who has been to space has reported seeing little sparks flash through their vision and we finally figured out what it is.
These are tiny little bullets of space radiation bouncing off the astronauts' retinas. We are protected from these here on earth due to the deflective power of the planet's magnetic field, but in space there is no such invisible forcefield.
As the subatomic particles pass through the eye and strike the retina, it sends off a false signal down the optic nerve and into the vision centres of the brain, producing the resulting flash.
Unfortunately, this is far from harmless. So far, at least 39 astronauts have since developed cataracts, thought to be caused by the flashes of radiation.