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.'"

Comments

Well... I could.

[ShadowBlasko]

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.

Re:Well... I could.

[Q-Hack!]

See the milky way or don't live in the dark. I think 99% of the population would choose one over the other.

The whole point of reducing light pollution doesn't mean living in the dark. Lighting manufactures can create good lights that allow the light to shine down and not up into the sky. Its just getting the 99% of the population to choose these instead.

Re:Well... I could.

[Just Some Guy]

I drove out west a few years ago. Took 140 out through southern Oregon. It was just BLACK. No moon, no lights, nothing but starlight.

I have never seen anything quite as beautiful as being on a Navy ship about 2 degrees off the equator and under a new moon, with no light from horizon to horizon but the sky and the phosphorescent bacteria we were churning up. It was one of those things that was so lovely that it almost hurt, as if you couldn't look at it and breath at the same time.

Re:Well... I could.

[Just Some Guy]

IHBT, but what the hell:

If you're too "manly" to appreciate beauty, then your life sucks more than your narrow brain can appreciate.

You don't even know you're missing it.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

On a trip to Vegas.

[LWATCDR]

I looked up and said to a friend. This town is so corrupt even the stars have left it.

Light pollution is fixable

[esoterus]

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.

Re:Light pollution is fixable

[petes_PoV]

Except that most citizens consider darkness a "problem" that needs to be fixed.

They like their lights - it gives a sense of security, although in practice, a well-lit area probably just helps burglars and assorted baddies to see how to break into your house - rather than having to draw attention to themselves by carrying torches, tripping over things they couldn't see - or even being able to tell if there's a large dog waiting for them, in silence.

I don't know if it's due to a generally depressed demeanour, but most people prefer to look down, at their feet, rather than up at the sky. I've even had arguments with people who were so uncaring about their surroundings that they didn't know the moon was visible during the day.

This is goofy...

[BobMcD]

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.

Re:This is goofy...

[DdJ]

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...

Well, I'd probably call it "light polution" when it started to have measurable negative impact on the ecosystems that it's being poured into.

For example, do you know about the interactions between exposure to light and melatonin (not melanin) production? And how some animals (arguably including humans) use that to regulate their circadian rhytms? And how other animals use differences in that to measure the change of seasons, and undergo metabolic changes based on that measurement? About how that can impact fertility in some species?

Also, do you know about how light interacts with migration instincts? Do you know why Japanese fishermen light up the sea at night?

The "milky way at night" is an aesthetic thing, and I can see folks using it for PR purposes, and also to make what's going on into something people can directly relate to. But don't conclude from that that it's the only argument available, the only reason to think about "light polution". That might be natural to conclude at first, but it's like concluding that the only problem with littering is that styrofoam containers by the roadside are ugly to the eye, just because that's an argument you hear someone making.

Re:This is goofy...

[tverbeek]

A) If you look at a photo of Earth at night, you'll see why a clear view of the night sky is not just a train-ride to the suburbs away. Huge swaths of land are blanketed in artificial light. By the logic you're presenting here, it wouldn't matter if we cut down all the trees as long as we had tree museums for people to go visit.

B) Pollution is pollution, regardless of the source. Lower levels are more tolerable than higher levels, but it all detracts from the view of the sky (along with other negative effects). All sources of light pollution should be minimized.

C) Seeing the wonder of the universe is a good thing. Living in a cave is not. Is that distinction so difficult to comprehend? "The rest is technology at work, for better or worse." Oh, so maybe you do grasp the point! Except that we don't have to just accept technology "for better or worse"; we can choose to use technology in ways that makes our lives better and not to use technology in ways that makes it worse.

Re:This is goofy...

[johannesg]

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.

Ok, first take a look here. Now look carefully on the western edge of Europe, in the country of the Netherlands. See that extremely bright spot stretching along the cost? I live right in the middle of that. Now look around that: everything is equally bright. The nearest darkish spots are to the south, in France, about 350km away.

Let's say I go to France, then. The train to Paris will take me there in about four hours, but I don't want to go to Paris, I want to head out into the dark spots. Have you ever noticed a train stopping in total darkness, in the absolute middle of nowhere-without-a-light? Right, neither have I. They stop in places with high enough population density to make a train stop useful. Those places typically have lots of light as well. So even if I were to make the additional train ride to get to an area that is at least semi-dark, I would still need to get out of the city I'm in and into the countryside to have any benefit.

I hope this explains to you why I have seen the milky way precisely _once_ in my entire life... And it was an unforgettable sight.

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'.

I'll skip the obvious joke about your dad, but for some of us "the sticks" is two countries to the south...

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...

I don't know about the precise word "pollution", but it is certainly undesirable when it deprives us of something of awesome natural beauty - even if it serves some purpose in our industrial society.

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.

What purpose does the grand canyon serve? Why not just make it the largest landfill in the world? What purpose does yellowstone serve? Why not build a city there so people can use the geisers for natural heating? What purpose does the arctic wildlife reserve serve? Why not dig the whole thing up and draw out every last drop of oil?

The sky is no different from that - even if you've never seen it with your own eyes.