What are those floaty things in your eye?
If you've ever noticed tiny worm-like shapes or transparent blobs in your field of vision - you know, those things that mysteriously disappear as soon as you try to focus in on them, then reappear right when you give up and start looking at something else - don't worry, you're not crazy, and you don't have parasites in your eyeballs. What you have is floaters, and while that name invokes certain other things we won't mention, there's nothing gross about them. (Just FYI if you get the other kind of floaters in there... hello, pinkeye .) Technically known as muscae volitantes, which in Latin translates to "flying flies", these annoying optical illusions are created inside your eyeball under very specific circumstances. As the TED -Ed video above explains , floaters are tiny objects that get inside your eyeball and cast shadows on your retina - the light-sensitive tissue at the back of your eye. They're not foreign materials,...