Make a wish upon a star — while you still can.
Scientists are warning that due to light pollution, human’s ability to see the cosmos at night could be wiped out in just 20 years.
“The sky at night is a part of the environment, and it’s a great loss if future generations never see it. It would be like never seeing a nesting bird if that were to happen,” Martin Rees told The Guardian, British royal astronomer .
“You don’t need to be an astronomer to care about this. I am not an ornithologist but if there were no songbirds in my garden, I’d feel impoverished.”
Light pollution conditions have rapidly worsened in the last several years, including since 2016 when astronomers reported that the Milky Way was no longer visible to a third of humanity, according to Rees.
Scientists told the outlet that light pollution is now causing the night sky to brighten at a rate of about 10% per year.
A child born in an area were 250 stars are visible at night today would only be able to see about 100 by the time they reach 18, Christopher Kyba, of the German Centre for Geosciences, dauntingly revealed.
“A couple of generations ago, people would have been confronted regularly with this glittering vision of the cosmos – but what was formerly universal is now extremely rare. Only the world’s richest people, and some of the poorest, experience that any more. For everybody else, it’s more or less gone,” Kyba said.
Light pollution is a problem that has existed for more than 50 years. The latest growth of this issue can reportedly be traced back to increased usage of LEDs and other types of night lighting.
Other than the aesthetic loss of our stars, light pollution poses several other ecological dangers.
In 2019,, scientists discovered that light pollution is contributing to an “insect Apocalypse “ – Light has a significant impact on the way bug species move and search for food. It also affects how they reproduce, grow, hide from predators, etc.
Light Pollution confuses migrating sea turtles, and birds that rely on moonlight to guide them.
Darker nights also provide cover for crime and other dangerous situations for humans, researchers note.
But light pollution could be solved in a very simple way.
Rees and his team of researchers are pushing their 2020 report that outlines several policies to help diminish the illumination, including appointing a minister for dark skies, creating a commission for dark skies and setting strict standards for the density and direction of lighting.
The post Scientists warn that light pollution could make stars invisible in two decades appeared first on New York Post.
