Light pollution in twenty years will prevent us from seeing the stars
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Twenty years later and we will never go out to see the stars again. Literally though. And it’s all the fault oflight pollution, a constantly growing phenomenon and made even more significant following the diffusion of LED lights: the Earth (and the sky) is increasingly illuminated, and there is less and less darkness, which, as the scientific community has now ascertained, compromises astronomical research and damages the health of the planet and its inhabitants. And, last but not least, it deprives us of the pleasure of contemplating the stars of the celestial vault.
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Light pollution could lengthen the time of year that mosquitoes bite
by Simone Valesini
This time the British Royal Astronomer warns about the dangerous consequences of light pollution Martin Reeswhich on the pages of the Guardian he recalled how “the night sky is an important part of our environment” and what a pity it would be “if future generations could not admire it, just as if they could never admire a bird’s nest”, further underlining how “you don’t need to be an astronomer to worry about it: I am not an ornithologist, yet if if I didn’t hear the birds singing in my garden I would feel impoverished by it”.
There The issue of light pollution has long interested the scientific community in general and Martin Rees in particular. Already two years ago, the scientist had founded a bipartisan parliamentary group and proposed the establishment of a “dark sky ministry” to counter excessive lighting, submitting to the decision makers a decalogue of recommendations to regulate the issue. And even before, in 2016, a team of astronomers reported how the Milky Way had now become invisible to over a third of humanity.
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Sleep, sky and ecosystems: the dark sides of LED public lighting
by Simone Cosimi
The numbers are dramatic: according to research conducted by the team of physicist Christopher Kyba, working at the German Research Center for Geoscience, the night sky gets about 10% brighter every year, so that a child hypothetically born today, and today able to see about 250 stars in the sky, will be able to contemplate only 100 when he turns 18. “A couple of generations ago”, the scientist told the Guardian, “anyone could roll their eyes and enjoy a spectacular view of the cosmos. What was universal is today extremely rare: only the richest people in the world can enjoy them, and some of the poorest. For everyone else the show is more or less over.”
And to say that it would take very little to reverse the trend: according to the expert, take measures such as shielding external lightstheir downward pointing, a limit to their luminosity and a change of their color (from blue-white to red-orange) would already be enough to give us back part of the now vanished stars. The question of the color of the light is linked to that of the use of LED lamps, raised last year by a report published by the European Space Agency: “LEDs certainly represented a great innovation”, reads the document, “because they made it possible to reduce energy consumption [dovuto all’illuminazione] and to improve night vision; however, overall, light pollution has increased. Paradoxically, the cheaper and more efficient the lighting, the more we become ‘addicted’ to light“.
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Light pollution from astronomical observatories: too much artificial light in our skies
by Christina Bellon
By the way, it’s not just the pleasure of seeing the stars that is in danger: in fact, light pollution has serious and profound consequences, for example, on the behavior of some nocturnal animals, and appears to be related to the decrease in insect numbers; And responsible, among other things, for sleep disturbances and other dysfunctions in both humans and other animals, who are progressively reducing the use of night vision. All the more reasons to reflect seriously and understand that it is perhaps appropriate to turn off some lights. Darkness isn’t all that terrible.
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