The Death Of Darkness

Light pollution is playing havoc with age-old rhythms of life—of sleep, procreation, metabolism, migration and foraging.

- Rakesh K Alshian

WHEN WAS the last time you looked up at the night sky and marvelled at the wondrous caravan of countless celestial objects winking at you from the deep recesses of space and time? At the Milky Way, the galactic stardust of which our planet is a part, or the Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars visible to the naked eye, or for that matter moons of Jupiter and rings of Saturn? To be sure, when it comes to the heavens, most of us, especially the urban kind, are proverbial frogs in a well (except perhaps vicariously when we seek omens in its mysterious movements). But even for the astronomically curious, the modern city lights have become so dazzling and ubiquitous that there are very few spaces of sheer darkness left from where one could enjoy an unfiltered view of the night sky.

The story goes that in 1994, when an earthquake in the wee hours cut off power to most of Los Angeles, some people reported the spooky appearance of a “strange sky”—they were actually looking at stars!

Scientists refer to it as light pollution, and it is captured most tellingly in satellite images of Earth. According to a recent study published in Science Advances, satellite shots taken every October between 2012 and 2016 show that the world is not only getting warmer but also brighter. The US especially is so flushed in this artificial glow that children growing up there now may never see the Milky Way. The story in western Europe is not much different either.

Lighting is colonising the rest of the world too at a brisk pace. Indeed, according to the study, most of the growth in lighting came from developing countries—Africa still has large patches of darkness while India and China appear floodlit. This is in line with earlier studies that suggest that lighting grows with rising GDP. So, the world is set to get even brighter in the times to come.