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by nabla9 2353 days ago
Near/Bright thermal heater range is 780 nm – 1.4 μm.

Unless those heat lamps that also produce visible light damage the eye, I don't see how 865nm lidar could do it if the power is low.

1 comments

Laser light is much worse for the eyes because the energy is concentrated. It’s why you can buy 100W light bulbs but a 50mW laser needs a warning label.
This doesn't invalidate your point, but the watt comparison you're making isn't correct. 100W is the power of the electricity input to the lightbulb, while the laser wattage is the power of the light output. The actual comparison would be more like 10W to 50 mW (which of course still means that the concentration of energy is required to explain the difference in eye danger).
It’s just a relatively simple calculation of (amount of energy/amount of space) * time You could have a 100w laser pointed at your eye, but if it only operates for a femtosecond it would have no effect. The light isn’t worse or better than any other form of light.
In electronics instantaneous power still needs to be accounted for. You can’t just average it out especially if its many orders of magnitude higher than continuous.

I’d be absolutely shocked if biological systems were somehow different.