Once Upon A Starry Night

While the festive lights are still on display for holiday celebration, gently close your eyes and imagine for a moment that a world where light never was as what we know on the earth. Picture a world engulfed in an impenetrable pitch dark night with no artificial lights visible anywhere. Nightly darkness was how I grew up in a small village without electricity in China. In fact that was how people lived throughout most of the human history. The world only changed over a century ago after Thomas Edison demonstrated his light bulb innovation to 3,000 guests in Menlo Park, New Jersey on New Year’s Eve in 1879. Electric street lights quickly became the norm in many parts of the world.

Street lighting not only revolutionized home and work conditions but also provided a powerful weapon for both economic and urban development. They also improved working conditions and allowed late night businesses such as restaurants, shops, and sporting events. The new employment opportunities in turn fueled the migration from rural areas to the city in search for work. Today, light is ubiquitous to the economic development of a city. As rural areas urbanize, cities agglomerate, and infrastructure modernizes, the same night sky increasingly brightens. In fact, economists have been using satellite imaging of Earth at night to study economic growth, map poverty, and analyze inequality especially in places where reliable economic data are lacking. 

There is, however, another side of the story and darkness once had its own mighty appeal. Every child growing up knows the magical English lullaby “twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are!”, yet very few children today have actually experienced the same night sky full of twinkle stars as Jane Taylor did when she wrote the lyric in 1806. Most of us would not have been able to imagine the bold and bright swirling Starry Night painting as Vincent van Gogh did in 1889. Not just because we do not have his artistic talent but also the lack of opportunities for us to experience actual starry nights to make us dream or inspire us to imagine.

It’s easy to forget that being bathed in light is a relatively modern phenomenon. Observation of the movements of celestial bodies was an integral part of life to all ancient civilizations. Early human observations were all based on what could be seen by the naked eye until Galileo first used telescope systematically to observe myriads of celestial objects. Earlier this week on Monday, the planetary conjunction of planets Jupiter and Saturn was a rare opportunity for skywatchers to observe a sky event which is still visible to naked eye.

When an earthquake rumbled through Los Angeles at 4:30 a.m on January 17, 1994 which caused a complete blackout, some people went outside and looked up at the sky. What they saw above was something unsettling, cosmic bodies that had been invisible up to that point — twinkling stars, clustered galaxies, distant planets, and more ominously, a large silvery cloud that trailed over the city. It was reported that some were so nervous and startled that they called 911. What were they seeing? The Milky Way galaxy which likely motivated Jane Taylor for the twinkle little star lullaby and similar sky probably also inspired Vincent van Gogh for the Starry Night painting.

The increase in artificial lighting has brightened the skies to the extent that most city dwellers are unable to see constellations or the Milky Way. There are many consequences with light pollution. We not only lost the chance for seeing the starry night which had fueled imaginations and fairy tales for generations. Light pollution also affects animals since light and dark often signals when to eat, sleep, hunt, migrate, or reproduce. We may not always realize but light pollution affects human beings the same way. We, too need natural darkness for sound sleep and good health. In addition, it is estimated that lighting accounts for fifteen percent of global electricity consumption and five percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

Although light pollution studies and regulations are still in their infancy, many governments and organizations around the world have started to develop measures to reduce light pollutions. A new law came into effect in France in 2019 that sets an important standard in western Europe for the protection of nighttime darkness through controls on the emission of light in outdoor spaces. China has developed one of the Asia’s largest dark sky reserves, a reserve spreading over 2,500 square kilometers in an area at Ngari, to combat light pollution and create an ambient location for astronomical observation. According to International Dark-Sky Association, there are twelve dark sky reserves around the world including one in the United States located in Central Idaho.

Obviously there could be many compelling reasons in favor of light pollution control, not the least of which is to allow starry night sky to again inspire human imagination. Quoting JK Rowling, “Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

(Photo Source: NASA, 12/16/2020)

(Update on Jan 1, 2021: A week after I posted this article, MIT technology review published the linked article yesterday which lists one of the twenty biggest technology failures in 2020 is the potential light pollution by the low altitude satellites and significant impact on astronomy).

Related Articles

Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 (10/6/2017)

There is a Ditch on Both Sides of the Road (1/10/2019)

(If you find my article informative, please subscribe to my series by clicking the subscribe button on the top of the article to be notified of my new articles. Better yet, please join the conversation by leaving a comment or share the post with your network. Thanks and as always I appreciate your feedbacks.)