One third population of the world are deprived of viewing Milky Way. Image Courtesy – Credit of this lovely picture of Milky Way belongs to http://apod.nasa.gov and astrophotographer Michael Goh of Perth, Western Australia.
‘Light pollution’ keeps 33% of the world’s populace from seeing the Milky Way from their homes, as indicated by new research. Scientists behind the study, published in the science journal ‘Science Advances’, found that 60% of Europeans and almost 80% of North Americans can’t see the Milky Way.
‘Light pollution’, most basic in thickly populated urban regions, is the after-effect of the counterfeit light people make to enlighten streets, structures and neighbourhoods. Almost all the people who live in the US, and Europeans also realize some amount of ‘light pollution’.
Scientists are as yet attempting to comprehend the ramifications of light contamination for people. Scientists were of the opinion that it might influence the human capacity to see the sky around evening time in natural conditions.
Maggie Aderin-Pocock, a space scientist and presenter of the Sky at Night said, “Generations to come will never see that beauty”.
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He also said, “We are here on planet Earth but we live in a huge cosmos, and it’s one of the things that links us to our position in the universe. And so it is wonderful to see it. I think by looking up at the stars we have endeavoured to do so many things, we’ve sent probes to Pluto and beyond, and if we lose contact with that I think we lose some of our ability to dream and to aspire. It starts with the Milky Way but where will it end?
I spent a wonderful six months working at a telescope in Chile, at the Gemini telescope, and there we could actually see (the Milky Way) – it did look like a path across the sky. It has inspired songs, it has inspired people to great endeavours and so I think the more light pollution there is the more we miss out on that, and the generations to come will never see that beauty.”
Lord Martin Rees, British cosmologist and astrophysicist said, “It’s important that it’s not just astronomers who care about this”. He also told, “The night sky is the most universally-shared part of our environment. It’s been gazed and wondered at, throughout history, by people in all parts of the world. It’s indeed a sad deprivation that many young people have never seen a clear starry sky. And it’s important that it’s not just astronomers who care about this.”
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In Martin’s opinion, “I’m not an ornithologist, but I’d feel deprived if songbirds disappeared from my garden. Likewise, there would surely be widespread sadness if light pollution screened out our celestial environment from ever more of us.”
Ben Miller, an English comedian, actor and director said, “The Milky Way is our link to the Other: to the lost civilisations out there in the galaxy, so far away and so profligate that they appear not as stars, but as a single brush stroke of watery light. When we lose the Milky Way, we sever the umbilical cord that connects us to the wider universe.”
Reference: The Guardian
