Singapore is most 'light-polluted' country: Researchers

[yuiyoshida]

WASHINGTON - When Vincent van Gogh peered out the window of the Saint-Paul asylum at the nighttime sky in Saint-Remy in 1889, he saw the brilliant light of innumerable stars over southern France that inspired his evocative painting "The Starry Night."

But nights no longer are so starry for billions of people. About 83 per cent of the world's population, including more than 99 per cent in Europe and the United States, live in areas beset by nocturnal "light pollution" from the incessant glow of electric lights, researchers said on Friday.

It is so pervasive that more than a third of people globally, including nearly 80 per cent of North Americans and 60 per cent of Europeans, cannot see the luminous band of the Milky Way, a familiar nighttime sight for the eons of human existence.

"It is surprising how in a few decades of lighting growth we have enveloped most of humanity in a curtain of light that hides the view of the greatest wonder of nature: the universe itself," said Fabio Falchi of the Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute in Italy, who led the research published in the journal Science Advances.

"Our civilisation's roots are connected to the night sky in every field, from literature to art to philosophy to religion and, of course, to science."

http://news.asiaone.com/news/singapore/singapore-most-light-polluted-country-researchers

[Just reading posts]

1. Consequence of highly concentrated urban living.