I grew up in a rural place where we could see the texture of the milky way just stepping outside at night—it’s been fun taking friends who grew up in cities on wilderness backpacking trips and sitting out to watch the stars. There’s an awe to a true night sky that I think has real psychological impact.
I did also have a cool experience, deep in the backcountry at a high elevation camp some years ago: we went to sleep in a gale, the tent flapping all around, with a cloudy sky. I thought we’d get a big storm, but I woke up hot at 3am, the air totally still. I slid out of the tent and the sky was completely crystal clear. An incredible spread of stars. I watched for a while and noticed a reddish glow on the horizon. We were so far out and it wrapped around in all directions, so I knew it couldn’t possibly have been a town, but I was puzzled. I learned about airglow when we got out of the woods: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airglow" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airglow
Outside of a few places like the Himalayas or Australia isn't not possible to see the darkness everyone lived in until street lighting.
This is the most accurate map and it still under reports light pollution under 21.5sqm <a href="https://www.darkskysites.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.darkskysites.com/
Worse satellite constilations may make it impossible to have a dark sky anywhere: <a href="https://arxiv.org/html/2604.09427v1" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/html/2604.09427v1
Led lights have caused such a massive increase in light pollution, let alone the effects on humans due to the blue spike, that they should be banned outright.
Yeah I really don't like the proliferation of blue-pumped LEDs, they're environmentally friendly from the narrow perspective of energy use but they make the lived environment much worse in other ways, particularly the horrid clinical high-K ones people who want to make a 'modern' ambiance love so much.
In my view we should simply have improved on what already existed, instead of blue-pumped LEDs we should have used monochromatic amber ones like the SOX streetlights which were once ubiquitous in the UK. Night actually looked like night back then, rather than a cheap and nasty approximation of daytime.
>they're environmentally friendly from the narrow perspective of energy use but they make the lived environment much worse in other ways, particularly the horrid clinical high-K ones people who want to make a 'modern' ambiance love so much.
They are friendly in the same way the feeding a baby petrol is. Sure it's more energy efficient, but humans aren't machines where input = output. It's going to take decades to get rid of all of them, and then even longer for all the cancers that blue light causes to work themselves out. It's amazing that we invented a new asbestos and put a green wash on it.
From what I've seen, most of this energy-per-lumen efficiency has just been funneled into outputting more and more lumens, not actually saving energy. It's only going to get worse with the new 2027 regulations coming in.
In people for what cancers have been investigates there is also evidence of a link, but not enough studies have been done to say that it's the case for all cancers. This is absense of evidence rather than evidence of absence.
Interesting, thanks for the links. To be honest I'm not scientifically or statistically literate enough to know what to make of that beyond that there might be possibly something there, maybe.
It's so interesting that people assume the color of sodium lamps is the color of night just because that's the color technology made it at one brief moment in time. Just goes to show that illumination is culture, just like everything else
it might also have something to do with the orange glow of the sodium lamps resembling the orange glow of fire and torches, which were the primary medium of lighting in the dark for humanity for thousands of years
macNchz · · focus · HN ↗
I did also have a cool experience, deep in the backcountry at a high elevation camp some years ago: we went to sleep in a gale, the tent flapping all around, with a cloudy sky. I thought we’d get a big storm, but I woke up hot at 3am, the air totally still. I slid out of the tent and the sky was completely crystal clear. An incredible spread of stars. I watched for a while and noticed a reddish glow on the horizon. We were so far out and it wrapped around in all directions, so I knew it couldn’t possibly have been a town, but I was puzzled. I learned about airglow when we got out of the woods: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airglow" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airglow
noosphr · · focus · HN ↗
This is the most accurate map and it still under reports light pollution under 21.5sqm <a href="https://www.darkskysites.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.darkskysites.com/
Worse satellite constilations may make it impossible to have a dark sky anywhere: <a href="https://arxiv.org/html/2604.09427v1" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/html/2604.09427v1
Led lights have caused such a massive increase in light pollution, let alone the effects on humans due to the blue spike, that they should be banned outright.
BoxOfRain · · focus · HN ↗
In my view we should simply have improved on what already existed, instead of blue-pumped LEDs we should have used monochromatic amber ones like the SOX streetlights which were once ubiquitous in the UK. Night actually looked like night back then, rather than a cheap and nasty approximation of daytime.
noosphr · · focus · HN ↗
They are friendly in the same way the feeding a baby petrol is. Sure it's more energy efficient, but humans aren't machines where input = output. It's going to take decades to get rid of all of them, and then even longer for all the cancers that blue light causes to work themselves out. It's amazing that we invented a new asbestos and put a green wash on it.
duskdozer · · focus · HN ↗
CatMustard · · focus · HN ↗
Blue light gives people cancer?
noosphr · · focus · HN ↗
In mice the link is clear and simple to test.
<a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11311462/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11311462/
In people for what cancers have been investigates there is also evidence of a link, but not enough studies have been done to say that it's the case for all cancers. This is absense of evidence rather than evidence of absence.
CatMustard · · focus · HN ↗
noosphr · · focus · HN ↗
idiotsecant · · focus · HN ↗
BoxOfRain · · focus · HN ↗
derpyzza · · focus · HN ↗