Can you burn a paper with a green laser pointer?

It's unlikely, but I wouldn't eliminate it completely. When the laser hits your eye, it automatically closes for protection. The laser designator's power output is less than 5 mW and the reflectivity is fast enough that the energy absorbed by the eye does not cause permanent damage. As long as it's visible light. After all, even more powerful lasers don't seem to permanently blind flies. The fly gets too hot and leaves before it hurts the eye (I used a 50-150MW 532nm DPSS and a 500-1500MW 455nm diode). A lot of sense. The fly has a compound eye consisting of a large number of very small lens units, each focused on its own receptor. The elements of the eye are not optically "good" and have low angular resolution. That is, the size of the focus increases. Instead of the green laser pointer designator beam being sharply focused on a single point (like the human eye creating a magnifying glass-like hot spot in the sun), many of the elements behind the point are out of focus.