Fear of the light: why we need darkness | Hacker News Reader

Fear of the light: why we need darkness

theguardian.com

29 pointsjonathansizz18 comments

There are so many of these articles these days. The authors speaks of our obsession with driving back the night via tech. Then they bemoan how people can no longer see the stars. But what about those of us who _naturally_ cannot see stars tech or no? I'm in the pacific northwest, where your lucky if you can see the moon through the clouds during much of the year. I used to live in the middle east, where natural dust often blocked out or blurred the night sky. But it did create amazing sunsets unlike anything I've seen in north america. And if you are in a deep valley or surrounded by trees, both common in much of the world, you aren't going to see much of anything on even the clearest night.

If starlight is so important, at what point should we project images of them onto those evil clouds? True darkness, without seeing the stars, is not an unnatural state of affairs.

Two years ago I took a trip to the Atacama desert. My luggage was lost in the flight and the hotel manager was nice enough to let me use their washing machine. I saw a few of the most beatiful natural landscapes I've ever seen down there, but nothing so far has compared to the feeling I had looking up to the sky while picking up my clothes from drying at night. I don't get emotional very easily, but my eyes filled up with water and I had multiple shivers at that moment. I woke up my girlfriend and we stood there like two kids for a long time looking at our galaxy. I'm so glad the company lost my luggage.

I think there's a lot to be admired with experiences like these and can't help but feel a sense of tragedy when I know I'll never have these experiences because of my modern lifestyle choices or where I live. I often think I may be missing countless similar experiences because of my rushed city lifestyle. Interesting and something I'd like to try now.

Recently experienced the green northern lights and nothing I say will describe a beautiful and almost spiritual experience. I only suggest you try and see for yourselves.

The maps of the US lights at night show that there is a line running down the middle of the country. East of that line it is essentially solid light, with little islands here or there of darkness (often large state or national parks). West of that line, it is opposite. Mostly dark, with islands of light at major cities.

What is puzzling is the location of the line. As far as I can see comparing maps, there is no obvious geographical feature that would have halted dense development at that line.

A good map showing this is the light pollution map at DarkSiteFinder.com: http://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html

The line runs from Winnipeg in Canada, down through Grand Forks and Fargo, then Sioux Falls and Sioux City, then Omaha and Lincoln, then Wichita, then Oklahoma City, then down to Dallas and San Antonio.

I wonder if that line was just where westward expansion had reached before the Gold Rush and the rapid increase in migration to the far west, and afterwards people who would have otherwise went slightly west were instead going far west, and so we ended up with a sparse area in between?

That's a very good observation. I grew up on the line (in Topeka). I believe it is roughly where Western expansion had reached at the time the transcontinental railroad was finished. I don't know if correlation equals causation there. It's also a line where water starts to be less available in Kansas and areas south.

It's simpler than that. Dense population dropoff lines up with dropoff in average rainfall: http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/pcpn/us_precip.gif

Adjust rainfall for growing season, and it might straighten out the bend in the Dakotas & Minnesota.

The elevation contour lines run pretty much north-south in the middle of the continent. The dark-light line seems to be around 1000 feet of elevation.

My best guess is that the line represents the upstream limit of navigability of the Mississippi River's western tributaries. West of this line, it makes less and less economic sense to settle (unless it's next to a railroad line) since it's so difficult to ship things to and from the outside world.

http://www.astro.sunysb.edu/fwalter/AST389/TEXTS/Nightfall.h...

just in case you haven't, spare your self some time. One of my favorites. No spoilers please.

This is excellent. I hadn't read it before.

Seconded that everyone should read it.

Yep. Great stuff. The full book is worth a read as well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_short_story_...

When I was growing up, Nightfall was considered to be the greatest SF short story ever written. I'm not sure what the current ranking of it is but it is well worth reading.

I went on a backpacking trip a few weeks ago with 2 friends in the White Mountains. We summited Mount Bond at around midnight, 2 days before the new moon. It was such a beautiful experience, I've never seen the Milky Way like that before. Despite being exhausted and still over a mile between us and the campsite we were heading to, without a word we all took off our packs, laid down on the rocks, and spent almost an hour looking at the sky. There's something very humbling about being able to see so clearly how minuscule our place in the universe really is.

"It’s not just darkness we fear, it’s the vastness and loneliness of the universe"

I wonder if this concept can be expanded beyond darkness and noise pollution, to a person's relationship with empty spaces and silence from mankind's activity. Any good books / references would be appreciated.

"Every 2.5 minutes the West loses an area of natural land the size of a football field to human development."

https://www.disappearingwest.org/

I made a trip out last year to see the milky way. I'd never experienced anything like it before and I think we're losing something incredible by not being able to see it.

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." Plato

We also need darkness and the occasional glance to infinity for the health of our eyes. I believe that kids today are just not getting the 'eye exercise' needed for healthy eyes. Everyone seems to be wearing glasses or contact lenses. We are going blind!!!

We have healthcare systems that put kids in glasses at the first available opportunity to correct things, eyes get lazier and more corrective optics is needed. We also have sunglasses for when the sun is out, again, eyes get less exercise. Then, as per this article, we have 24/7 lighting in offices, shops and selected homes. It is not just the stars we are not seeing any more, the sun is not seen either!

I was fortunate to grow up in a rural area with very few streetlights. Also, my childhood bedroom did not have electricity. If I wanted to read late into the night I had to be by the window. In those days it was apparently bad for your eyes to do just that, that was the new 'masturb*tion' as far as eye care was concerned.

I also had to walk or cycle to school. With cycling you do get to exercise your eyes properly, that glance behind and back again in a split second to see what car is going to 'hit you' puts those eye muscles through their paces. Stuck in traffic in the back of an SUV just does not give your eyes the chance to get good.

Nowadays I am amazed that people have the lights on during mid day during mid summer. Such an insult to the glowing thing in the sky! I detest that because I believe that anything short of an unshielded nuclear reactor is just bad for the eyes. Nobody I know sees it that way. My eyes are far from perfect, if I drink a dozen pints of beer I can get double vision, not that I have drunk enough to experience that in decades, uptime of non-blurry sight has been 9 nines for me.

There is also a myth that screens are bad for the eyes. Again I beg to differ. I have been working with screens as intensively as the next programmer to read this thread. However, in the office, if someone needs to read the (IMEI?) serial number on the back of an iphone, I can just read it fine, which is weird when it is a 19 year old asking the favour. (Actually just remembered also grew up with a lack of TV due to reception issues in aforementioned rural area so probably not watched screens as much as most).

Nowadays we have a culture of going to the gym, doing pilates and other such nonsense to compensate for sedentary lives. I say 'we', I mean us white folk in 'first world' countries. We could have gone the other route, just using wheelchairs everywhere, but, some semblance of physical health is an aspirational thing.

Now, eye health... If we could have dark skies for the sake of the children rather than a few anorak wearing boffins then that just might work.

As an aside, one benefit of having quality eyesight is that I can use hi-res screens with text the size that it used to be in books, i.e. small. My colleagues have to have normal resolution screens with text the size of the 'large type' books that public libraries have for old folk. Yet they can be in their early twenties. Quality eyesight with no corrective optics is as important to me as being able to breathe.

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