WellnessOptions Magazine issue11

A baffing glow of satellite flares for global eyes

Just before my son moved out of our house, he changed the colour of his room to black: walls, carpet, and blinds. He cleared everything out of the room except for the mattress, the stereo system, and a single black light. Then he put glow sticker stars everywhere, and created a hideout filled with music under the stars for me.

As I lay there in the dark, gazing at the starry starry night immersed in soul-stirring music, I started a journey of recovery from a serious illness. And realized that the stars, be they out there or in here; are all part of me. They are me.

There is no life except in the living, Guy Bourgeault of the University of Montreal says. By the same token, there is no environment except when we are in it to perceive it as such. And we are nowhere, except here now, positioned in this Earth environment.

Our ability to become aware of the “self” and our surroundings has helped us overcome many environmental odds that toppled stronger animals. The capability to learn from experience and understand how things work has enabled us to create and control many elements in our worlds. However, these same abilities are also driving us to overuse and abuse, causing harm to both ourselves and the environment, and reducing our natural adaptation abilities.

If Einstein is right in his relativity theory, then space-time is a dynamic, changing, and expanding continuum. While we affect changes to cope and to grow, we are also changing our enviornment and our relationship with it. And it in turn changes us. To recognize and respect the basic interdependent nature of this relationship is essential. We need to maintain a dynamic equilibrium.

For instance, our average sleep time after the invention of the light bulb has reduced up to 1.5 hours a day. And as the lights on Earth continue to light up one by one, and the starlights begin to fade one by one, there may be a day when the last twinkle in the night sky becomes too dim to be recognized.

A Russian company, Space Regatta Consortium, SRC, has proposed several times to orbit solar mirrors to reflect sunlight down to Earth. If they succeed, the Earth will be constantly subjected to cones of light with an estimated width of 5 to7 km (about 3 miles), at a light intensity 5 to 10 times brighter than a full moon. Both the American Astronomical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society of London have protested to the SRC. But in fact, our night sky is already marked by occasional reflective flares from orbiting satellites, such as the bright Iridium satellite flares (page 8) among the moving stars.

According to Daniel Green, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, light pollution on Earth is already blotting out the night sky for many North American cities. The problem stems mainly from outdoor lights such as street lamps, yard lights, sign glare and spotlights that shoot light up into the atmosphere.

Light pollution is accelerating partly because of the growth of cities around the world. For example, neither India (population 1,000 million) nor China (population 1,200 million) was very bright in the picture on page 3, but their cities will light up as they grow. Another contributing factor is increased lighting efficiency. New forms of lightings are two to three times more efficient, but instead of reducing wattage and gaining efficiency, many American cities are using these new lamps to get more light.

According to statistics from the International Dark Sky Association (IDSA) in Arizona, about US$2 billion per year in the US is wasted in unnecessary outdoor lighting. For example, the town of Lexington, Massachusetts, with a population of 28,000, has more than 3,000 streetlights. Outdoor lighting bills cost the city US$200,000 to $300,000 a year. An estimated 2.5% of all electricity used in the US is for outdoor lighting. Green suggested that one simple solution is to use fully-shielded, more focused outdoor lighting to avoid spreading excess light skyward. From the first moment of the day to the first moment of another day, we live with our environment, external and internal. In this issue, we discuss some of the elements in our everyday surroundings: from the subtle (daily hassles, gravity, air pressure) to the visible (lighting, colours), from the audible (sound), to the edible (food, intestinal flora) and drinkable (water), from the wonders of human adaptation to survival champions of the world.

We can never cease to fight and cope with the environment, both as individuals and as a species. Growth and civilization strive on this spirit to overcome. How we strike a dynamic, harmonious chord with our enviornment is a challenge that requires creativity. And we are the only animal on Earth gifted with it.

Lillian Chan