Slashdot Mirror
One Fifth of World's Population Can't See Milky Way At Night
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Cosmos Magazine: "Light pollution has caused one-fifth of the world's population — mostly in Europe, Britain and the US — to lose their ability to see the Milky Way in the night sky.
'The arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage,' said Connie Walker, and astronomer from the US National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.
Yet 'more than one fifth of the world population, two thirds of the US population and one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the Milky Way.'"
And then they built that super Wal-Mart 1/4 mile from my house. Now I am lucky if I can see Sirus or anything of a less than amazing magnitude.
Poor kids, I wish they could see what they are missing.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
Living in northern Philadelphia, I'm lucky if I can make out enough bright stars to see Orion or Ursa Major, let alone something like the Milky Way...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
I live in Los Angeles. One day I went up to Yosemite to hike Half-Dome. It's a long hike, so we started at 3 in the morning. When we broke out of the trees, I looked up and shit my pants.
I looked up and said to a friend. This town is so corrupt even the stars have left it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If we could start getting in the habit of focusing our lights down through the use of hoods and lamp covers we could probably make fast, cheap improvements on this problem. Light is wasted going up, with the exception of cool satellite shots showing the Earth at night. I for one would love to be able to see more than magnitude 1 and brighter stars from my rooftop in Brooklyn.
Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen. -Hawking
I take issue with a number of things here...
A) Is this 1/5th immobile? Can they not hop a commuter train to the suburbs or something? I'd really like to know. I know that when I go out to see Dad in Wyoming the difference is absolutely noticeable, but I've always assumed that the same could be gained by finding some road-side location out in 'the sticks'.
B) When is light 'pollution', and are we okay with (what I assume is) a situational definition of that word? Is light 'pollution' when it comes out of your headlights? Or only when Wal-Mart uses it to light their parking lot? Is there some measurable standard of 'enough' light, and the excess is 'pollution'? Or is it only 'pollution' when you want it to be dark? I'd honestly like to know...
C) What does 'the arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage' mean, exactly? Are we really weighing the advantages of light at night against 'natural heritage'? Because, from where I sit, 'living in a cave, eating only what you can kill with a pointy stick' is also our 'natural heritage'. The rest is technology at work, for better or worse.
It just strikes me as weird, and I'd love to hear voices from the other side of it.
If you live 10 minutes from NYC, you live in a densely populated enough area that your neighborhood would block out the Milky Way anyway.
You ever walk through East Harlem at night, kid?
Sometimes street lamps are a little more important than allowing New Jersey to have un-obstructed view of the stars.
That's one of the silliest terms I've ever heard. Comparing light at night to smog or dirty water is disingenuous. There are no health hazards to nighttime light. Its simply a marketing term for people that are angry that they have to travel a little bit to get a good view of the stars. Well, too bad. That's the price you pay for civilization. Cities and suburbs are lighted at night for good reasons. Properly used, night lighting deters crime, improves safety, and allows us to use more of the day for productive purposes. Lighting allowed us to do work at night that we formerly couldn't do.
I don't know about you, but I'll take all of those advantages over living in the dark just so I can get an unobstructed view of the stars. And I say that as someone that used to enjoy amateur astronomy quite a bit (getting a new telescope will have to wait until the toddler gets older).
When I was using a telescope, I simply accepted that I was going to have to drive 20 minutes if I wanted a fantastic view of the stars... I even had my favorite spots picked out. Now if you choose to live in a place like New York City, then use your head... you're going to have to accept that you are choosing to live in a heavily lighted environment. It's a tradeoff. Want beautiful, naked-eye views of the night sky? Move to Montana or some remote desert town. Want better economic opportunities and the benefits of a city? Plan your sky-viewing trips out of the city, then.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
So you'd be okay with me shining 50kW movie floods through all your windows, 24 hours a day? How about if I use my jackhammer right outside your house 24 hours a day too? That okay?
The cycle path behind my house is illuminated with low-hanging LED lights. Sensors at every crossing switch off the lights on those parts of the path which is not in use. There are tests and ratings available to judge how much light specific models of lamp posts send upwards. Write to your city official!!!
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Here is the inaugural instance:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154153&cid=12931330
Background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The statistic should be that 1/5th of the world's population lives in population dense cities that produce too much light pollution to observe the milky way at night.
MOST places in the US and Europe offer spectacular views of the night sky, including the Milky Way. Fortunately the population is not very dense except in the big cities.
When 1/5 of the world has too much light pollution to observe the Milky Way, then I will worry. 1/5 of the worlds population, no big deal. Hell, I'd guess that most of the other 4/5's of the population wish they had that problem, cause then it might mean that they have the power to run their wells, clean their water, refrigerate their food, compete for the next big call center, and maybe stop burying 1/4, or 1/3, or even 1/2 of their children before they see 18.
While I agree that it would be nice if we industrialized nations could dim it a little in our big cities so our spoiled kids can see a few stars, I don't consider it a cause for concern.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Seriously, to me this is sort of old news. Let me tell you a story;
When I was young, I grew up in a small town about 50 miles from London in the UK. We rarely left the area because we really couldn't travel much. When I was in a little older, we lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland... and finally when I was 18 I lived in London for a few years. This is significant because the first time I truly traveled outside of major metropolitan areas in my life, I was 21 and I went to Oklahoma. I was staying with friends in Chickasha, OK... and one night, I think it was my fourth night in the area we drove out to Lake Louis Burtschi, as poor college students do when they can't afford to go out and do stuff. Anyway, I recall distinctly stepping out of the car and literally had my breath taken away. My friends said I stood dead still for almost a minute, and I remember the feeling of vertigo, the feeling of depth as I stared into that starry night sky, the Milky Way clear above my head as I had seen it in books.
All my life, I had grown up seeing these pictures in books of mountains with the Milky Way shown clearly there... and all my life I had believed truly that those pictures were in some way faked to make a dramatic point. Sure, I had vaguely seen the "fuzz" of the glow of the galaxy across the sky on the clearest nights I can remember in Belfast, but never in my life before had I seen anything like it. I had never even suspected that I was able to see the sky that clearly from any vantage point on Earth except perhaps the tops of the tallest mountains... even then I doubted it looked like that. I just had no idea until I saw it first hand.
That night I stood there for the better part of 5 or 6 hours, taking in the majesty of a night sky I had never suspected I would ever see in my life, thinking that the only place I could see that would be out the window of a space shuttle (something I knew I would never do).
I'm 36 now, but that night is still vivid in my memory. It's still incredible, and still so unbelievable to me that I had the chance to see that. I have been back there since, and though it's not as clear now as it was 15 years ago, it's still an awe-inspiring sight for someone like me who has lived most of my life in suburbs. Today I live in St. Louis... we're lucky to see Betelgeuse most nights because of the light pollution of our metropolis. I know I can drive a few hours out of town and get a better view, but Missouri is too humid for a view like I got in Oklahoma.
I know how the younger people feel today... and they really don't know what they're missing. It's a sad state of affairs, and yes... one that can be rectified by getting away from the large cities if possible. But remember my example; I didn't even consider that getting away from the cities would afford me that much better a view... because I had never seen it and never encountered it. Cities are so densely packed in Britain that you'd be really hard-pressed to find a single location where you're far enough from light pollution to see that clearly. Sure, maybe the highlands of Scotland... but having been up in the highlands a few times I can say that you'd be damned lucky to get a night that wasn't overcast in most of those mountains.
I'm somewhat reminded of the people of Krikkit in Life, The Universe and Everything: They lived their entire lives surrounded by a dust cloud that obscured the night sky to the extent that it never even occurred to them that there was anything beyond that dust cloud... or even that there was a sky, as such. I think in some ways I felt when I saw the Milky Way clearly for the first time that I had spent my entire life obscured from the real night sky and as such had never even considered it's existence in the way I have since.
Now that they built a giant Lexus dealer with stadium lighting I can't even see the moon anymore.
This is typical environmental Dogma. Lets break it down...
1) "Light pollution" -- So you've already been conditioned that pollution is bad, therefore, what you are about to read is bad.
2) "has caused one-fifth of the world's population" -- OMG! 1/5... Yes, that means that four-fifths has NO problem seeing the milky way. That is in POPULATION numbers. Lets do math :) 6,706,993,152 (July 2008 est.) and 4/5 = 5,365,594,521.6 (That .6 must be me.) Ok, that works out to 80% of the worlds population CAN see the milkyway. So, Whats the problem again?
3)"mostly in Europe, Britain and the US" -- Oh... I see, boo-hoo.. I don't know about who "US" are because I can see it just fine from my house, so it must really be You. THEN MOVE.
4)"'The arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage,' said Connie Walker" REALLY? I thought our planet's natural heritage was to vilently erupt spewing lava over insignificant surface dwellers. Maybe to freeze and build up encroaching ice over the surface? I think that if you look at the geological timeline, we have admired the milkyway for but a briefest of moments to the planet. So, where is the heritage? Oh yes, in our feeble minds.
5) The rest just reitterates the negative because "a lie told enough times will become the truth."
I'm sick of this cult. When will they go away?
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...