Generations of people who have not seen the Milky Way have grown up.

The magnificent picture of the Milky Way in the night sky has always inspired astronomers, poets and artists. What could be more grandiose and impressive than the disk of our Galaxy, in which the Solar System is just a tiny grain of sand in the sleeve of Orion, among countless worlds. In this myriad of star clusters, alien civilizations almost certainly existed at higher stages of technological development (see the calculation in the article “ New empirical restriction on the prevalence of technologically developed creatures in the Universe ” according to the Drake equation with fresh corrections for the number of exoplanets, published on May 13, 2016 in Journal of Astrobiology , doi: 10.1089 / ast.2015.1418, pdf ).

A glance at the Milky Way gives an understanding of the tremendous power of the Universe and the insignificance of humanity, evoking awe and inspiring for feats. But not our contemporaries, who live in large cities. For the first time in history, several generations grew up, which almost never saw the Milky Way due to light pollution, and if they see it during rare outings outside the city, they will not even immediately understand what it is.

Artificial lighting increased the brightness of the night sky and caused the most visible effect of light pollution - an artificial glow. In contrast to various aspects of science and ecology, this particular phenomenon receives little attention, say the authors of the scientific work, which is published in the public domain on the website of the scientific journal Science Advances . By publishing their research, the authors want to draw attention to the problem of light pollution.
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According to the results of the study, today 60% of Europeans and almost 80% of North Americans cannot see the luminous disk of our galaxy due to the influence of artificial lighting. This also applies to 100% of the population of individual countries, such as Singapore, Kuwait and Malta, to most of the Netherlands, Israel and Qatar, as well as to the vast areas around metropolitan areas like Moscow, New York, Hong Kong, Beijing and almost everything. the east coast of the United States.



Lead author of the scientific work Fabio Falchi from the Italian Scientific and Technological Institute of Light Pollution (Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute) calls the current situation "cultural loss of an unprecedented scale."

His colleague and co-author Chris Elvidge of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) considers those moments when he was able to see the Milky Way, magical sensations: "Due to our technology, by now we A large number of people in several generations have been deprived of this opportunity, he says. “We lost something — but how valuable do we think this loss is?”

Overall, the Milky Way is no longer visible to more than a third of the world's population. When electricity was cut off in Los Angeles in 1994 due to an earthquake, people began to report to the police en masse that a strange "giant silver cloud" had appeared over the city. In fact, it was the Milky Way.

"Humanity has packed our planet into a glowing fog that makes it impossible for most people to see our galaxy," write the authors of the scientific work.

For example, American programmer and photographer Zach Grether, who is keen on taking photos of the night sky, was forced to search for a deserted place far from cities in order to photograph the Milky Way on a long exposure. On May 6, 2016, he was very lucky: at 1 hours and 24 minutes a fire car suddenly swept across the Milky Way: it was the first step (lands in the tree in the photo) and the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which was returning from orbit.


^{The first stage (in the branches of the tree) and the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket}

The story of Zach shows that luck smiles to well-prepared and intelligent people. But it also indirectly indicates a sad fact: the appearance of the Milky Way for a modern person has become so rare that some people are willing to make considerable efforts to still see and take a picture of it. This is a little sad. After all, most of the inhabitants are not so keen on astronomy to go out of town, having specifically set themselves the goal of finding the Milky Way. Rather, people will go out of town to barbecue and dig up a vegetable garden, but not to look at the sky.

The map below shows that people in Western Europe need to travel hundreds of kilometers to find a place with an untouched sky, where its brightness does not exceed the natural level by more than 1%. For example, for a resident of Switzerland, the closest such place on the planet would be a region in Ukraine at a distance of 1360 km.



In the European part of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine with a relatively small population density, it is not so easy to find areas where light pollution is less than 1%. On the map, such areas are marked in black, where the sky brightness exceeds the natural level by no more than 1% (from 0 to 1.7 micro candeles per m ² ). Blue areas correspond to areas with sky brightness 1-8% higher than natural (from 1.7 to 87 micro-candela per m ² ). Greens - by 8-50% higher than the natural (from 87 to 699 microcandel per m ² ), yellow - from 50% to the level when the Milky Way becomes indistinguishable (from 87 to 688 microcandel per m ² ), red - from the loss of the Milky Way to an approximate level of cones stimulation, photosensitive cells in the retina of the human eye (from 688 to 3000 micro-candela per m ² ). White color indicates areas with a maximum level of light pollution, where the eye is not able to adapt to the dark (more than 3000 micro-candela per m ² ).

The scientific work, published in the journal Science Advances by an international group of scientists, is based on data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership orbiting satellite.

In the near future the situation will only get worse. For example, the following map shows the current brightness of artificial sky illumination in the V-range (left) and the forecast of subjectively perceived brightness for the dark-adapted eye after switching all sodium lamps to new LED outdoor lights with a light temperature of 4000ºK, without an increase in photooptical flux by comparison with current lamps. The problem is that 4000ºK cold-light LEDs emit a large amount of light in the “blue” part of the spectrum, to which our eyes are particularly sensitive.



“Before artificial street lighting spread in the 19th and 20th centuries, almost every person was familiar with the Milky Way,” said Marek Kukula, an astronomer at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, “We see it in the mythology of the sky, in all world cultures. This is one of the most obvious objects in the sky, along with the stars, the planets and the moon. The night sky is part of our natural heritage. It is beautiful, it inspires awe. The ability to see him connects us with the Universe and gives an understanding of our place in the world. It’s a shame to lose it because we lose a direct connection with something very beautiful and much more than we do . ”



Scientists warn that light pollution not only affects our culture, but has direct biological effects on birds, insects and mammals, including even humans. Now almost all of us live in the conditions of a permanent mini-jetlag , that is, a weak disorder of daily biorhythms.