Commercial Flight Cosmic Rays

[Excalibur]

Something I've been meaning to ask the forums for a while;

I recently was on a long haul flight, cruising at FL410. I was quite happily snoozing, eyes closed but not yet asleep when I was startled by a large orange/yellow flash in my right eye. Immediately following this my eye started watering like crazy and felt rather warmer than it should do.

My first thought was I'd just managed to poke myself in the eye whilst half asleep. I did however consider another possibility - cosmic rays.

So what do you think - did I just subconsciously punch myself in the retina (something like a dog running in it's sleep) or was my left eyeball pummeled by a high-energy cosmic ray in a million-to-one happenstance?

Answers and discussion below please!

[rodion]

I've heard of the flashes and flickers experienced by astronauts and other exposed people during various activities, but to get such a large flash and eye irritation after the fact must have made it quite a high energy event, by the sounds of things. I think it's perfectly possible that it could have been a rogue high energy particle, but other conditions vie with it equally to explain it. Maybe it was just some normal physical event (you actually did touch your eye, some small bit of particulate matter in the cabin air got into your eye, et cetera), or maybe less likely, it was a sensory hallucination from the edge of consciousness - funny things happen to your various senses when you're falling asleep, most everyone knows the feeling where your sense of balance/orientation fails and you wake up from a feeling of tumbling, and auditory hallucinations of name-calls and other things when falling asleep are common too. I've never had it myself but it seems credible that one's vision could experience that kind of brain noise too when snoozing, I don't have any special knowledge though so I'm just putting ideas out there.

Edited October 1, 2013 by rodion

[Excalibur]

I guess I'll just never know.

I always try to be open-minded, and agree that being on the edge of sleep can produce some interesting experiences, however I've never once had a pronounced physical effect from what may have been a 'sensory hallucination'.

If I get a cataract in the near future in that eye then I may have a suspect...

[Kerbart]

Option 3: You were snoring and the passenger next to you tried a novel way to stop it.

[Excalibur]

Option 3: You were snoring and the passenger next to you tried a novel way to stop it.

Haha! I've often thought of using that same 'novel way' to stop people snoring in the past. As an aside, I don't snore!