Jason Yosar, Associate Lecturer, School of Medicine, The University of Queensland/ The Conversation, Australia
If you squeeze your eyes shut very tight and then face the Sun, that should be enough to protect your eyes from damage. You won’t go blind.But be careful because it is very easy to damage your eyes with sunlight. You should never look directly at the Sun, with or without sunglasses, even during a solar eclipse, because that can cause a lot of damage to the eyes. Sometimes this damage can be permanent.
In August 2017 a very silly man named Donald Trump shocked many people when he looked directly at the Sun without protecting his eyes. Everybody was gathered to see a solar eclipse, which is when the Moon gets in the way of the Sun and blocks out a lot of its light. This doesn’t happen very often and lots of people will gather around to watch one, but people usually wear special glasses (not normal sunglasses) to do it.
Light from the Sun is very powerful and looking straight at it by accident will usually make you blink and close your eyes involuntarily. That means it happens by itself, without you having to think about it to make it happen.
It’s like how you start blinking when a bit of dust or sand enters your eyes. It’s our body’s way of protecting our eyes from damage. If you squeeze your eyes shut and then look at the Sun, your eyes should be OK.
If you do it for long enough, you might end up with a condition called “solar retinopathy”. This condition is rare because most people are thankfully sensible enough to not stare at the Sun.