Chasing Darkness In today’s urban landscape, light pollution poses a much greater threat than the dark. by Emmanuel Dzotsi
Photo: Cestomano - Flickr
I
n the relative stillness of night, the ground shook, and the world seemed to come apart at the seams. Street lights came crashing down as the sinews of the earth buckled, compressed, and then split, ripping apart tarmac and concrete with terrifying ease. A few minutes shy of five in the morning, all the lights went out, and darkness enveloped everything. When the power came back on, the phones were ringing off the hook at 911 Emergency centers, but the calls were not about the earthquake or about the expected looting. The 911 operators listened as hundreds
told of mysterious lights in the sky, of aliens come to announce their presence in the universe, of the beginning of the apocalypse. By the time the sun rose on January 17th, 1994, a few hours had passed since the Northridge Earthquake had hit the wider Los Angeles area, and the people of Los Angeles set about going back to their daily lives. The earthquake was a predictable side effect of living so close to the previously unknown Northridge blind thrust fault, but for many the legend of the shining lights in the darkness persisted until Ed Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in
Los Angeles, offered a very simple explanation. Without neon signs and city lights to impede its view, the Milky Way, theoretically perfectly seen on the west coast, was easily visible. For the first time in years the people of Los Angeles had seen the stars. To anyone who has lived in a city, such a story is perhaps not as surprising as it should be. In fact, many people who might have read the last paragraph might have paused inquisitively when I mentioned that the Milky Way is theoretically perfectly visible on the western coast of the United States. A great number of THE ALGERIAN
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