Have you ever noticed those squiggly lines that come into your field of vision from time to time?
They kind of look like worms, and are usually a light grey color - almost like a shadow.
Once you try to look at them, they disappear or drift more to the side.
So what are these mysterious floating lines in your eye?!
First of all, don't worry, they're normally not dangerous.
These "Eye Floaters" or "Floating lines" are scientifically called "Muscae Volitantes", which means 'Flying Flies' in Latin.
They're not bugs, they're not an object in the real world (only you can see them), but they are actually inside of your eyeball.
To understand this, we have to look at the anatomy of our eyeballs first:
Between the pupil and the retina, there is a big space inside of your eyeball, which is filled with a gooey, gel-like liquid (it's a similar consistency to egg whites.)
This is called the "Vitreous Humour", or only "The Vitreous", and consists of 99% water.
The other one percent are collagen fibers, and this is what creates that gel-like consistency.
These collagen fibers spread as a network of tiny lines across your vitreous.
Sometimes, these lines are so close together that the collagen actually clumps together due to molecular attraction.
When the light now casts a shadow on your retina, the shadows of these lumps are what you see as floaters (you're not actually seeing the real thing, just a shadow of it!)
Usually you won't even be able to see that - it only happens when the collagen lumps are particularly close to the retina (only a few millimeters apart from it!), then they appear to be quite big in our field of vision although they really aren't .
You can't focus on them because they are floating with the movement of your eye - if you look to the left, they also float to the left, and so on.
You should only worry about floaters if you suddenly see a lot of them appearing at once, paired with flashes of light - that might be signs of your retina detaching.
But normally, they are absolutely harmless.
You might have noticed that you only see these floaters once in a while and not all the time.
But funny enough, a floater that you've once seen is still there - they don't naturally go away. You just don't see them all the time.
This has 2 reasons:
1) You don't see floaters a lot in your daily life. They only come to our attention when we're looking at a blank, bright surface. For example an empty, white computer screen, or a bright blue sky.
Only then, the light will cast a shadow on those floaters that's actually significant enough for you to notice them.
2) You would theoretically see them more often, but your brain purposely decides to "ignore" them.
This is a phenomenon called "Sensory Adaptation".
Our brain shuts out some things from our attention - because otherwise, we'd go crazy.
Imagine you would constantly be aware of your breathing, the feeling of your back against the char, saliva accumulating in your mouth, or an old bruise on your skin.
All of this information is not necessary to be processed at all times, so your brain fades it out - this is also the reason why you sometimes forget the glasses your looking for are on your head, or you forget you're wearing a piece of jewelry that you have on at all times.
So in case of the floaters, chances are your brain is purposely fading them out because they're constantly in your field of vision and not moving.
As you can see, these eye floaters are a harmless and totally normal condition.
You can actually prepare yourself for seeing more of those as you age - because when we get older, the volume of liquid in our vitreous decreases, making floaters appear more regularly.
Images: 1, 2, 3, 4 , Sources: 1, 2, 3
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