2024 Holiday Potluck!

Find today's articles at LightPollutionNews.com

A panel of guests from 2024 reflect on their favorite news stories of 2024 They discuss significant victories, such as the community-led opposition against the MSG Sphere project and the introduction of regulations in various countries addressing light pollution.

- Community success in opposing MSG Sphere project 
- United Nations addresses satellite constellations’ impact on astronomy 
- New Zealand aims for dark sky continent with light pollution regulations 
- Astrotourism trends and their economic potential 
- Health implications of light pollution linked to mortality rates 
- Increasing awareness and activism against light pollution 
- Moab designates dark sky community status 
- Alzheimer’s risks associated with nighttime light exposure 
- Challenges and solutions for space debris and light pollution 
- Importance of public engagement in legislative processes 

Chapters

• 12:10 Global Efforts to Combat Light Pollution
• 22:03 Light Pollution Governance Progress & Challenges
• 29:57 Astrotourism Impact on Dark Skies
• 36:28 Health Impacts of Day/Night Light Exposure
• 44:47 Moab, Utah Dark Sky Certification
• 52:05 Updating Legislation to Combat Light Pollution
• 59:39 Insects and Light Pollution Health Impacts
• 1:17:26 Addressing the Issue of Space Debris

Transcript

Bill McGeeney: 0:01

Hi there, I have a very special holiday bonus episode for you. It's the end of the year and last year I did my top articles left out of 2023. This year I thought we might do something a little different, so I invited back guests from 2024 to join me one last time and tell me their top articles of the year. All the articles we discussed today will be over on the show page at our website, lightpollutionnewscom. This should be a very fun show, hope you enjoy Today. I'm really excited to have some old friends, some old faces here that I saw a lot in 2024.

Bill McGeeney: 0:38

And let's go through all the people who are on this call right here. Starting off, up on the top left, I have Mattia Schmidt. Mattias, you have been on the show since the beginning, really appreciate it. I don't know how we bumped into each other, but it really has been helpful. So there's always some humorous perspective on something.

Bill McGeeney: 0:57

John Barentine, the legend. You know the insight is always great. Yana, yana Akshina, who tells us all about the satellites and helps us decipher what the public policy is on that. Michael Reimer, you also have been with us for two years, so it's always good seeing you back on January and you had some big victories in creating some really unique approaches to having lighting design. So you have some really dark sky friendly approaches to lighting design. Some dramatic lighting design wins there. Kim Walczak, who has this hilarious picture of a light belching over the city of chicago. That is great. And then I have a betty buckley. You know, betty buckley, stars at night definitely a great movie. Check it out. Uh, what there's? Isn't there a movie by the name of stars at night out there too, I think there's some confusion with an actual like big time holly. No, not your movie. As an actual, I mean the big time Hollywood movie.

Betty Buckley: 2:07

No, I know. Yeah, no, I don't. Not that I am aware, but you know, sometimes the words are really close. So probably something like you know, some sort of horror thriller movie.

Bill McGeeney: 2:21

Well, I have my ugly holiday sweater on. It is a, since the Eagles are doing good. It's Santa Claus riding an eagle, naturally, and got my eggnog because it wouldn't be a holiday show without it. Let's get started, karam, I know it's pretty late for you and Jana, so we'll do you guys one after the other, and get things going here. And, karam, you submitted one of the most interesting storylines in 2024, ending in 2023 through 2024, which was when the MSG Sphere was being shopped around and they were trying to get the Sphere in Stratford in London, and Stratford wanted no parts of it.

Kerem Asfuroglu: 3:06

Yeah, it's mad and you know it almost happened. It's just like often, people didn't, you know, didn't fully comprehend that, actually like how close it was, and the reason I picked that is, you know, I think there is an important distinction of context within the dark skies world. Whatever you like, you know whether you're a rural community or you know an urban reality and I think it's rare that we actually get these success stories coming from urban communities organizing really well and also there's a lot of, you know, a sensitivity towards. You know, we want to be dark sky friendly but we don't want to be seen anti-development. And when you talk about the sphere, you know there's already been in Las Vegas, which probably you know. I don't think this kind of development is suitable for anywhere, but probably it's one of the most suitable places for anywhere. But probably it's one of the most suitable places if I need to just basically envisage where it would be. But they just basically wanted to take that and dump it in East London, stratford.

Kerem Asfuroglu: 4:15

Now, stratford for many people might seem like a newly built area. It is in some ways. In some ways, half of it was very recently built, although it has still a Victorian side to it, but it's also right next to Tottenham Marshes, the Victoria Park. It was newly, very recently, built up for the 2012 Olympics, so I think that gave them the agency. If you're going to do this, it better be a newly built area. But what they didn't really envisage is that how community basically perceived this and how they organized against it with various layers of reasons, but one of the most important element was that it was going to be very intrusive in terms of lighting. Now, like everybody's got a taste, but you know the way I see this development is. Like you know, let's strip all of the you know impact on, you know, dark skies and the light pollution element. It's, at the end of the day, it's a glorified screensaver that is emitting a lot of light and it's a very 2D quality, basically textured on a 3D sphere, and it's 100 meters tall and it could house 21,000 people, which was going to be like dropping a nuclear bomb in the middle of East London.

Kerem Asfuroglu: 5:49

But what happened was that, like you know, through Twitter and other social media platforms, a group was formed, stop MSG Sphere and they just really organized really well.

Kerem Asfuroglu: 6:03

They reached out to key people, um, and kept advocating and educating people in the process because, you know, often, uh, these people might seem as, like, you know, um, maybe the, the edgy group, or the anti-development, you know, the ultra conservative, uh, conservationalists, etc. Um, but what happens is that when you cause resistance and that causes some stir, that actually gives enough time to educate the others, and they've done that really well. So they actually started turning the public opinion towards their side. And I find it to be one of the rarest and huge victories in the name of dark skies, because I don't think we celebrate the news coming from cities as much as we should, because often we're really, you know, sensitive towards, like I don't know, small communities, organizing them together, establishing dark sky destinations, etc. But I think this is a very celebration-worthy effort and at the end of it, the MSG guys were so pissed off they decided to completely cancel their plans and they brought it over to Dubai, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I believe it was Abu.

Kerem Asfuroglu: 7:20

Dhabi sorry.

Bill McGeeney: 7:22

Yeah, that was an interesting story and, like you said, you had a community that actually came together and tried to say hey, you know, we don't want this here because actually the lighting is going to be really intrusive. My favorite part about this whole story was that MSG said yeah, lighting is going to be intrusive, that's why we're going to buy you all blackout curtains. Is going to be intrusive, that's why we're going to buy you all blackout curtains. Nothing signifies you know, maybe a New Yorker as much as having that kind of a perspective on your impact on someone else.

Kerem Asfuroglu: 7:54

Absolutely. And you know what. I really often don't understand why we tolerate intrusive light or light trespass as much as we do. Like you know, you never tolerate, like you know, um, your, your neighbors, throwing a very loud party, but when it comes to lighting, all of a sudden, well, you have curtains for it. Well, like, it's not as simple as that. It's just, like you know, it's the curtain is the, the last, uh, fans of defense? Really, like you know, that's the, but the impact is still out there.

Kerem Asfuroglu: 8:24

I think these guys had a very rude awakening. I don't think they ever thought this really massive development company. They never thought this project could come to a halt because of the community's concern around the impact this would have. But that established such an important precedent, but also, like you know, such an important threshold for everybody that the awareness towards these things that come to a level. But also not, you know, we often assume that the urban communities are, you know, not really aware of these things, but actually the tide is turning. So I see this as, like you know, as big as establishing a dark sky destination with an urban context. I think that's very, very positive news, because the impact that was going to bring was going to be like you can't offset that with like maybe like five dark sky destinations, if you see what I mean. So yeah, that's my bit of positive news.

Kerem Asfuroglu: 9:27

That was actually January 24. I think it became definitive that it's not going to happen, and the community were great. They were doing really interesting work. They were trying to assess all of these application documents themselves. We were kind of every now and then tuning in, just basically checking in through Twitter. Do you guys have the technical support that you need? They were very thinly spread on their staff to do this, because it's almost like they're doing this as a hobby on the site. It's not like somebody's paying them to take a legal action against it, but they've managed to establish a fantastic precedent for all urban communities, I'd say, particularly in the UK.

Bill McGeeney: 10:19

The comment that Khan said the mayor of London at that time, right is that pro-business, but played by the rules. So they had an impact. Right and to your point.

Bill McGeeney: 10:31

I mean we all should be impressed that in a major city or a major urban area around the world you had a community organized and say, hey, you know what, we're taking a stand here and they actually were successful. Karen, this is, this is a great story. Is the sphere is an ongoing saga wherever it goes? But I hear just shows inside are pretty neat. So hey, you know, it has one half.

Kerem Asfuroglu: 10:59

It's a ridiculous story, but it has a positive outcome. That's why, you know, we can be happy about it. I mean, obviously we'll find home in places such as Abu Dhabi or, like you know, places of that caliber. You know, entertainment is an important part of human culture. We totally get it. But equally like livelihood of people and their quality of life are also important, of people and their quality of life are also important, just because they happen to be living in a heavily densely populated urban area should not be the reason to degrade it.

Bill McGeeney: 11:32

Let's move on to Jana. I know it's like 10 at night over there. Are you in Brussels? I can't recall.

Yana Yakushina: 11:40

Hi, I'm in Ghent actually, which is 40 minutes without traffic from Brussels, so yeah, very close.

Bill McGeeney: 11:50

How long is it with traffic?

Yana Yakushina: 11:53

It can go to one hour, I think. It also depends on the part of the Brussels, but it's not that far. Oh, that's not bad, Ideally you can also get it in 35 minutes. So it really depends, all depends well, let's you.

Bill McGeeney: 12:10

Of course, in typical yana yukishina, you have to upshow the rest of us and you have to come out here and bring in two articles, uh. So let's get to it. Let's, uh, check out these two articles, and you always are so thoughtful with yourself, so let let's see. Yeah, take it away, why don't you?

Yana Yakushina: 12:26

tell me which one you'd like to leave with. Okay, first of all, thank you for the compliments and yes, I picked the most amount of articles than the other people here, but yeah, so my best picks for 2024 light pollution use will be both related to regulatory frameworks it's thanks to my professional interests as a lawyer and one would be on the international agenda and one would be on the national scale, which I think very curious developments recently. So we'll start with the first one of the beginning of 2024. It was February 2024.

Bill McGeeney: 13:01

This is the United Nations. Nine Nations of Peace to Address the Impact of. Satellite Constellations on Astronomy. All right, Jana, take it away.

Yana Yakushina: 13:11

Yes, so basically United Nation Corpus. If we put it in long, it's a committee on the peaceful use of outer space and they're dealing with international cooperation on the use of outer space and also dealing with legal issues which arise in the space sector. So it's a perfect field for us nowadays to look at the protection of dark and white skies and the use of satellites. So in February 2024, delegations representing 102 countries so at that moment the amount of members of COPUS, because now it's 104, they added two more countries there. They agreed to discuss the impact of large satellite constellations on astronomy at the meetings of COPUS.

Bill McGeeney: 13:57

So basically, from February, copus is the UN Committee on Peaceful Uses from outer space. Yes, yes, copus is the UN Committee on Peaceful Uses from Outer Space.

Yana Yakushina: 14:06

Yes, yes. So basically now we have the subject of the dark and white skies at the United Nations agenda for COPUS for now, but for the next five years, and I think it brings a very interesting perspective from the different sides. Perspective from the different sides First, we eventually got yeah, thanks for work of International Astronomical Union, royal Astronomical Society and all other groups involved in astronomy or space law who are pushing this subject over the last years actually to get it to the real agenda item for the future discussions. And first we have it at a very high level. So the problem of orbital light pollution, as it's called, and the problem of astronomical observations is going to be addressed in the broader countries. So we not only have countries who are actively involved in astronomy, like Chile for example, but also countries who have nothing to do with space activities or astronomy. So we're also raising awareness of the problem of satellite, mega constellations, problems of astronomy, actually explaining to people what's going on with space and what is actually dark and white skies issue and why is it a problem. So this is the first aspect of it. The second aspect of it, when we have the discussion at the high level of United Nations, we should understand that they are all interrelated. And when we have the communication in the space sector it will still have an impact on the discussions on other fields, for example United Nations Environmental Programme.

Yana Yakushina: 15:41

So when we start the discussion because they look at each other so when we're talking about that they start to address light pollution within the space sector United Nations environmental program can say oh look, light pollution is like a growing concern in the space sector.

Yana Yakushina: 15:54

So maybe we can also kind of look at it from another side, like environmental side, and potentially we should move there so kind of bring light pollution in this different United Nations agenda. Because here we all know that light pollution has all these broad impacts on culture, whatever. We all know all these broad impacts. And I think the third aspect of why I think these news are great, because potentially we can end up at least with a resolution which is non-binding instrument, so it's basically recommendations for countries. Maybe in the great future, in my opinion, we can come up with some binding agreement or binding treaty on how we should use the space related to dark skies and satellites. At least we can get in these five years to have recommendations on how to reduce potential impacts on satellites on dark and white skies and why countries should protect their astronomy. So I think it's a big step towards seeing the new political movements, new regulations in the countries and also it's a greater level of awareness of the issue. So this is why I picked this.

Bill McGeeney: 17:07

Yes, I think it's really important. I like to shoot this out to everyone and see if anyone has any thoughts. But, jana, do you think how do we make, how do we keep this issue as a non-conservative or liberal issue? How do you keep it out of being boxed into one of these, these partisan boxes that we like to put things in on both sides of the pond?

Yana Yakushina: 17:31

I don't think that's. Orbital light pollution is very conservative issue. I think it's a pretty modern issue and the governments, like the society, doesn't think that way. Like, if you talk, if you talk to people outside, nobody thinks about space sector If they're not related to it anyhow, which is the majority of people. So I think it's yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to answer this question, to be honest, because I generally don't think that orbital light pollution is a conservative framework. People don't think about it. We don't think about orbital impacts, the new space race.

Yana Yakushina: 18:08

In my opinion, actually, the difficulty is to kind of communicate it to people who are not aware about it, To conservative, actually, people, rather than the issue itself. So, yeah, and if you take the countries who are, again, very well engaged with astronomy, they of course are aware about the issue, like Chile or Spain, because they have La Palma observatories and stuff. But if you take ground-based light pollution, you can really see the changes, the changes that more and more countries are being aware about the issue, Like take Europe, for example, More and more countries started to adopt law and also one country looks at another country. If you take France, France even included light pollution actually pretty recently they included light pollution into National Biodiversity Action Plan and they have a target to reduce light pollution by half in 2030.

Yana Yakushina: 19:09

So, you can see that.

Bill McGeeney: 19:10

Yeah, john, I see your hand up.

John Barentine: 19:14

Yeah, as to why or how we could sell this to people of all political stripes. A tactic that we pursued early on in this process, starting about five years ago through the International Astronomical Union, was to proactively approach the industry, and we actually took a page from the history of the light pollution dark skies movement in that regard, going back to the 1980s when the International Dark Sky Association was founded, and the people who founded that organization believed from the outset that we had to talk to lighting manufacturers rather than demonize them. And I think we're in a much better place because they started that process quite early and long before the regulations came. There was an attempt to get lighting manufacturers on board with voluntary measures, changes to their lighting design, et cetera. That didn't result in them selling any less product but, when it was properly implemented, would have less of an impact.

John Barentine: 20:13

So we have been talking through the IAU to the manufacturers, the operators of satellite systems, in hopes that we can come up with some guidelines that represent a core of best practice, that they realize there's no detriment to their business model if they do these things to mitigate the impact to astronomy. It's a bit of a public relations win for them. We have to show that it really does make a difference, and that's what we're trying to do. But this is how we get around the fact that, honestly, the UN process just moves too slowly. We're probably not going to get a new treaty regarding how this all works, but if we can convince countries that want to get into the space business to write these ideas into their national space policies from the get-go, there's a possibility that we might avoid really the worst outcomes and that we will find a way to coexist astronomy and the space sector alongside each other, so that there's not an impact to the business model for the commercial side, but there's also this doesn't become an existential crisis for doing astronomy.

Bill McGeeney: 21:19

I like the way you put that, john. Jana, I want to move you over to your second article here, the uh petition to protect the dark skies, I'm sorry, petition to protect the darkness of night skies, which falls in line with our general theme yeah, sure, but this is the news.

Yana Yakushina: 21:39

Actually they're pretty recent, it's november 2024. Well, I mean, it's a long process. The results we have in november 2024. So the news is called the new zealand house of representatives responded to the petition of john henshwell with requests to restrict light pollution in new zealand. So I just want to give you a little bit of framework because I don't want to take all the time.

Yana Yakushina: 22:03

But New Zealand is working a lot like there's a lot of advocates and activists and groups of astronomers, environmentalists who are working towards making New Zealand the first dark sky continent basically. And of course the law is like the final goal because it's like overall overreaching regulations of the whole continent. But there are also a lot of work being done at like a local or even at the national level. Like they. They trying to create a lot of astrotourism areas, which also like it's non-binding measure. But if you create astrotourism area which requires the presence of the dark skies, the municipalities actually agree to facilitate this activity and they reduce the light around it. So they kind of try to work from the different perspectives.

Yana Yakushina: 22:52

And John Henshaw, he's one of the big astronomers, actually international astronomer, but he's based in New Zealand. He's Emeritus Professor of Astronomy of the University of Canterbury, new Zealand. He's a emeritus professor of astronomy of the University of Canterbury and he served as a director of the University Observatory as well for many, many years, and I think John is a legend. He basically dared to ask his government of his own country how and why we should reduce life pollution. So together with his colleague, they wrote this it's pretty long petition it's more than 20 pages, which is a lot for the government. They like like short, five pages max. But they explained why light pollution is an issue, like explaining what is it exactly, what impact does it have and so on, like with an accent on astronomy and the environment, because it's important for the New Zealand government, and also how it can be reduced.

Yana Yakushina: 23:53

In November 2024 they got results. Actually, it's been almost a year since they sent the petition to the government and this November the House of Representatives. They answered and they recommended the government to investigate how to limit the growth of artificial light at night in New Zealand, including considering the option of establishing a set of national guidelines that could be voluntarily adopted by the local council. I don't like the word voluntarily here, but I mean it's the first step, so it's really good already. They recommended that the government begin this work in 2025, so immediately, actually next year maybe not immediately, we'll see, but 2025 at least, because developing the appropriate solution for light pollution mitigation will take some time and light pollution increased significantly each year. And they also recommended to develop a set of national guidelines for light at night, with the focus of new facilities, buildings and streets.

Yana Yakushina: 24:59

So the future lighting like John Barantin just mentioned in his comment that we're working towards the prevention of the future activities will have an impact, and this is what New Zealand is also trying to do. So why I picked up this news? First of all, I wanted to highlight the great job that New Zealand is doing on regard of potentially having a light pollution law in the country, but also that the House of Representatives of the whole state actually supported this idea and, despite that, it's only at the level of recommendations. I think bringing the political attention to the issue at that level is really important for the country and I believe after this small step, it will lead potentially to the law. So I'm happy that there's such a good regulator update this year.

Bill McGeeney: 25:50

And Jana, we saw something similar in Chile, didn't we? About a year ago?

Yana Yakushina: 25:54

Yeah, Well, chile has a different approach. They used to have a national standard which was mainly for the territory where observatories were like or important sites where astronomical observations were, and then last year they extended this to the scale of the country. But yeah, it's nice, but we'll see how it's going to work. It's always the question of the practice and how it's actually going to reduce the light pollution.

Bill McGeeney: 26:26

Yeah, well, you know, as people tell me, we need lights for safety. So the common myth of overcoming that we have to overcome is a very tough one. I think that's where you see the voluntary right.

Yana Yakushina: 26:40

Yeah, but one of the best laws currently, I think, is in croatia. Croatia has a national light pollution law from 2021. They also have three supplemented ordinances and basically all croatia. I will not take long on this, but all the croatia is divided into lighting zones, so they define the maximum lighting parameters and they have the high level of control. They're really switching off the lights in different areas of the country and I think they're way more ahead of a lot of other countries, but it still takes time to really see the results, unfortunately.

Bill McGeeney: 27:17

So it's an example of cheating. Uh-oh, yana, you there. To Yana's point.

Yana Yakushina: 27:24

Let's see in five years.

Bill McGeeney: 27:26

Yana, we lost you for a second. Yes, yes, I'm here.

Yana Yakushina: 27:30

Yes, I'm here, so let's switch my camera, so the sound is working.

Bill McGeeney: 27:37

Yep, feel free, go ahead.

Yana Yakushina: 27:40

Yeah, so I think that's everything for me. It's nice when the relations started to develop, but it will always take time for the adoption of real law, especially at the international level, which is almost impossible Sometimes if the problem is not really a concern of everybody in the United Nations.

Bill McGeeney: 28:01

So yeah, but still good news In 2024, we also saw a voluntary well, a similar approach for parts of Montreal. So you know another major North American city which had similar guidelines that came out to recommendations for, you know, reducing your impact on light pollution. Yeah, 2024 was a year that we moved forward a little bit. I guess that's great. Jana, I'm going to let you go. I know it's real late for you. Really appreciate you coming on. Thank you, as always, karim.

Bill McGeeney: 28:38

I don't know, if you want to drop off, but it's fine. If you do not going to feel bad, I get it. It's a slate on your thank you.

Kerem Asfuroglu: 28:44

Yeah, I just have my glass of wine and I might just, like you know, kind of disappear into darkness. So well, I'm enjoying it. Don't worry about us, but thanks for having us, okay.

Bill McGeeney: 28:56

All right.

Kerem Asfuroglu: 28:57

All right.

Bill McGeeney: 28:57

I'll start top left on my screen. Matthias, you had a article, I believe, on astrotourism. Why don't you tell me about this guy the Rise of Astrotourism, Chasing Dark Skies in the Age of Light Pollution.

Matthias Schmitt: 29:15

Thanks for having me, bill, and all the other wonderful people that are advocates of dark skies. Bill and all your other wonderful people that are advocates of dark skies. I picked this article to bring to this potluck because it's well-balanced and very nourishing and I think you know, once we are over this food coma from seeing yet another Starlink satellite launch that is polluting the night sky, we can continue to enjoy the dark night sky as they have been for billions of years, without the impact of humans, without the astrotourism emergence or rise. I would not have a third career or rise. I would not have a third career. I'm being grateful is falling short of the opportunities that have been offered to me out here in Utah to do what I love to talk about astronomy and the night sky and how we're all connected, how we have used the planets and the motion of the stars through the night and through the seasons as a source of inspiration and also as a calendar so that we know when to plant crops and when to harvest them.

Matthias Schmitt: 30:35

I was just in Joshua Tree where I have a stargazing business, and when you get a bunch of people together that sign up for a stargazing tour, they never know what to expect and even though it was kind of.

Matthias Schmitt: 30:51

You know we're close to a full moon. Everybody was sitting there, there were about 15 people and the guide was talking about a few constellations that are setting in the west and all of a sudden, this meteor. We have the peak of a gemini. This meteor just appears and it streaks across the sky and people are going whoa, and it's going so long they have to inhale and continue going. Wow, and this was like a five, six second streak across the sky and from there on people were just all of a sudden you have a different connection Like this is amazing. This was just a little pebble passing through our atmosphere and you know this was not planned. I usually joke that we called NASA in the afternoon and said that you know 6.50 in the evening we want to have a little fireball across the horizon, but NASA is not that. Not that they're really good, but they're not that good.

Bill McGeeney: 31:59

Well, they might be with Elon taking over, right yeah.

Matthias Schmitt: 32:03

And this is, you know, the excitement that you could have, that you heard in these people's exuberance outbursts. You know that alone just made my whole night. And then, lo and behold, there was a stalllink train that came up from the horizon behind it, which shows also the impact of, you know, human technology and every everything has two sides, and it reminds me to have an open mind. On one hand, a genius like Elon Musk has done so many great things for the space industry. I believe that education is the best investment that anyone can ever do in their own life. Having access to the internet is a great source of knowledge, and I always joke technology makes smart people smarter and dumb people dumber. So it's great that more people have access to the internet and education. On the other hand, it's a downside that more people have access to the Internet and questionable sources of information. Let's call it that.

Matthias Schmitt: 33:27

So that's my dish for this Christmas potluck the rise of astrotourism. And I read about another community that is endeavoring to pass a light ordinance, because the citizens are very passionate about dark skies and preserving this amazing natural resource and asset that we have. And every one of you here at this potluck, all the things that you do, and you too, bill, and thanks for inviting me, you know, a while back, and I happily donate to your, to your podcast, to get things going and I encourage others that are listening to do the same thing. Just, you know, just save two of these expensive cappuccinos for the month to give Bill $10 to keep the podcast going. Thank you, all the things that you do are so, so impactful and sometimes I'm wondering, you know, does it really make an impact? What I do? And when I look at all you guys, I know that what I do and what I share makes a little bit of an impact and everything that we do together makes a huge impact.

Matthias Schmitt: 34:46

So, merry Christmas from Southwest Utah. I was gonna sing Holy Night, silent Night. Then I'm gonna turn it into the German Dark Night, silent Night, dark Night, christmas Carol. But I don't have a singing voice, which is why I do dark sky tours, so people can see my face and barely hear my voice.

Bill McGeeney: 35:14

Well, maybe next year you'll be able to sing for us.

Yana Yakushina: 35:17

You can work on it.

Bill McGeeney: 35:17

You've got 365 days to work on it, right? The article that you sent over, too, had quoted that astro-tourism, or dark sky tourism as they say, and I don't know where to quote where this number is coming from. I just feel like, john, you probably know where this number is coming from. It generated $5.8 billion for the Colorado Plateau area. Um, which you know. Is that an ida number? Is that something that if we don't know, that's fine?

John Barentine: 35:50

um, that that estimate bill? Yeah, is uh from a study that was done and published just before the pandemic began and it was forecasting for the following decade. So it didn't get the disruptive effect of of the pandemic, but, and it was forecasting for the following decade. So it didn't get the disruptive effect of of the pandemic, but that it was looking at about a five to $6 billion spend in that part of the United States over that decade and that it would be supporting on the order of something like 10,000 jobs in in downstream industries.

Bill McGeeney: 36:18

Wow, and it's definitely taken off over the past two years. I don't think there's any arguments about that. That's cool. Well, thank you, matthias. Let's move over to you. John, you're next to my screen and you had this really good one from the journal PNAS, for brighter nights and darker days predict higher mortality risk, and we did cover this on the show. But yeah, why don't you talk about this one?

John Barentine: 36:44

Yeah, this is the highlight for me and this is the very meaty main dish I'm bringing to this potluck. I think this is one of the most important scientific results in this realm that was published this year. This paper was first authored by Daniel Windred, who's at, I think, flinders University in Australia, and about seven or eight co-authors. The fact that it was published in PNAS, which is the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, means that it's fairly high profile. That's a very selective publication outlet and, to condense what they did here, it's important for two reasons. One, this was a very large study in human subjects. They had almost 89,000 participants that logged about 13 million hours of data of light exposure information, and they then followed these people in this study over a period of nearly eight years and looked at the number of them that were not around by the time that the study was over. These were all participants over the age of 40. So some of them died during the course of that time, which of course, included the pandemic as part of that period that they looked at, as part of that period that they looked at.

John Barentine: 38:03

But the really important thing here, I think, in this particular study, is that, whereas a lot of what we know scientifically about the impact of artificial light at night on people comes from either laboratory-type conditions where things are very carefully controlled and you know precisely the amount of light people are exposed to and you put them into situations that don't really look like real life, but we get a very strong signal in terms of the health impacts of light. And then there are what I think of correlation studies, where they look at maps of light at night on Earth and they match up where people live with epidemiology, so instances of certain kinds of disease, and then they count up this light that's indicated by satellites and they say oh well, people who live in areas with more of this light indicated by satellite have higher incidences of heart disease and mental illness and obesity and diabetes and all these other concerns that we've heard about. But only recently have we had the ability to put little sensors on people that they can wear on their clothing or put them near where they sleep, in their bedrooms, for example, to get at what actual amount of light exposure are people getting. And so when they did this over this large study in this long follow-up period, they found that where people had more exposure to bright light during the daytime that mortality from all causes. Once they adjusted for all the lifestyle factors like age, gender, ethnicity, lifestyle, sociodemographics, et cetera, those people had lower mortality risk.

John Barentine: 39:45

But people who had brighter nighttime exposures had higher mortality risk, again for all causes of death, and they found that it's at daytime light exposure, that nighttime light exposure and what they call the amplitude of the circadian period. So how consistent were people about the times that they were getting up and going to bed? How consistent was the light exposure during the daytime as compared to the night? They said, in quoting them, that this is associated with cardiometabolic mortality, with larger hazard ratios than mortality by all other causes, which is really tremendous as a result, and so their main finding here was that minimizing our exposure to light at night, but also maximizing our daytime light exposure during the day, and keeping these regular periods of light and dark and adjusting those with the length of the day change during the seasons, which enhances our circadian rhythms, is what promotes not only our overall health but our longevity, and that's an important piece of information that we've been missing up to this point. It's rock solid now.

John Barentine: 40:55

The one thing that we don't know yet, but I think is the next step is to put these same little wearable sensors on people and start to differentiate the outdoor light exposure that they get at night from their indoor light exposure, and I think when we do that, we're not dependent on this satellite data anymore, which is indirect.

John Barentine: 41:15

If we know how much outdoor light people are actually getting, I think we're going to find consistency in these poor health outcomes for people that are getting more light exposure at night. It will not surprise me at all if that's in fact what is found, because the body doesn't care where the light comes from, it's the fact that it's getting that light exposure. And if we can establish this in a very robust way, I think it gives us a really good pause to go back to the regulators and say, look, we really do need to decrease outdoor light pollution at night, because it really is a human health concern. So I would put this in the top few scientific results of 2024 and put a pin in this one, because it is definitely worth watching.

Bill McGeeney: 42:04

Yeah, this is definitely the turkey of the meal right here. This is a good one, john. And you see, I guess from your point you would think and would this be a fair assessment? If I am a regulator? And if I am a regulator, or if I'm someone who's reading, who's knowledgeable about this stuff, you wouldn't say let's turn off the lights. What you would probably say is, hey, let's keep the lights on as needed for rush hour and as needed for when people are getting around, and then, as the night goes on, why don't we dial it back some? Is that fair?

John Barentine: 42:41

Yes, and in particular, what concerns me is situations where somebody may have a street light outside their home that's on all night long and it's shining in a bedroom window and the amount of light that's making it into that indoor space may be very low intensity, but while you're sleeping you're getting that light exposure for hours.

John Barentine: 43:02

That's really significant, we think, for some of these health outcomes. It's not just. You know, there's been a lot of stories implicating us staring at screens in the early evening with high intensity light and not to downplay that because I think it's important but one of the factors that we don't know very much about is how much exposure to light are people getting in the middle of the night in their sleeping spaces and how much of that is coming from outdoor sources. It all adds up ultimately, but we need to get a better handle on what that contribution is before we can go back to the regulators and say, hey, there's a real, solid public health issue here and we have a solid evidence underlying that, and so we need you to figure out. You know, can you dim that light during the overnight hours In a residential setting? Can you turn that streetlight off completely during the overnight hours in order to limit this additional exposure people are getting.

Bill McGeeney: 44:00

Okay, thanks, John, for bringing that in. Let's go over to you, Mike, your next next up, Michael Reimer, for Dark Sky, you have this one from and this is the one I think right. Southern Utah News.

Michael Rymer: 44:13

That's right.

Bill McGeeney: 44:14

It's very significant the Moab Dark Sky Community Designation. That was a big event that happened this year. Why don't you tell us about it?

Michael Rymer: 44:23

Yeah, big event that happened this year. Why don't you tell us about it? Yeah, so this one is kind of my personal favorite dish because it has something to do with my personal work with Dark Sky International on the International Dark Sky Plays program. So this is one that I brought to the potluck knowing that I think I'm going to have the most of. Very selfish of me, but that's just how it is of Very selfish of me, but that's just how it is. So this is earlier this year.

Michael Rymer: 44:47

Back in May, moab Utah achieved its dark sky community certification. After a couple years of good work, they put out a really good, solid application, a very, very good lighting ordinance, which is a significant element of a dark sky community certification. Other things that are involved with this type of certification are, you know, doing outreach events in within the city, doing a lighting inventory, taking some sky quality measurements to establish a baseline of sky brightness and tracking those changes over time and a few other things throughout, and I know a lot of folks on this on this show today understand what goes into the process of achieving a dark sky play certification. So this one in particular was the very first one, as I started on this program just this year in January 2024. And this was the first project that I helped get to the finish line. So I'm very proud about that myself. And Moab is a very, I feel, well-known city, especially in Utah and the Colorado Plateau area, because of its significance in being kind of a gateway community to a lot of very beautiful landscape and skyscape and other certified international dark sky places like arches, canyon lands, other other parks in that area. So, you know, moab kind of to me felt like this final piece of the puzzle in that part of the state and getting its dark sky play certification.

Michael Rymer: 46:28

And never, never mind the fact that someone that we all on this call know and love dearly, betty Maya foot, is from Moab, utah. So I get to have that kind of as a bragging point for her saying I got your hometown certified. It's no big deal. If you want to thank me, you know. However, you want, that's totally fine. Uh, shout out to betty maya and her parents, stephanie and patrick, of course, who are there in moab. But if if you've never been to moab, utah, I cannot recommend it enough. It's. It's a great town in and of itself but, uh, you know, so, being so close to these other dark places in such a beautiful landscape, so photographic, just iconic pieces of the earth. Yeah, so I was very happy. You know Alexi Lam and Corey they they were the ones that got this application across the finish line there with the city, so they should be proud of the work they've done. So, yeah, just another, another reason to check out Moab, utah.

Michael Rymer: 47:27

So this is this is my favorite dessert here. I will eat the most of it today. However, I would like to yield the rest of my time to hear Matthias sing. If we can have that happen, I'm more than happy to share my time with that. But, yeah, this is the article I picked. So I appreciate you, bill, let me. Let me talk a little bit about it.

Bill McGeeney: 47:47

Yeah, I does. If I go out to Moab, am I going to get a brochure with all Betty Myers photos, because I think she has five in this article?

Michael Rymer: 47:56

Yeah, she exactly. They used all of her photos, so I think it's they should be divvying those out every time you drive into the, into the city and visit the visitor center.

Bill McGeeney: 48:05

Just you get a calendar? Yeah, it should be everything.

Michael Rymer: 48:09

Yeah, I, she would love it, so definitely. I mean they, they got her artwork everywhere in the, in those parks and in that city. There she's well known, of course, so she makes the town look great. I mean, in those photos it's I mean, it's a community, it's where people live and work, so it's not going to be those absolute pristine dark skies that you get, maybe, you know, in the parks nearby, but you know you can get pictures of the Milky Way like she's shown. So they got, they got things to do there in the city to improve their lighting outside, but they have time to do it and I have every ounce of confidence that they're going to make it happen.

Bill McGeeney: 48:47

Well, you make a good point there and since I got this amazing gathering here of all you great, smart, fine folks, if you can create a community that actually reduces light pollution, obviously there's going to be some amount of light pollution in that community. You're not going to be able to get away from. It going to be some amount of light pollution in that community right?

Bill McGeeney: 49:05

you're not gonna be able to get away from it. Uh, what? What's a good like? What's that maximum portal threshold that we should be aiming for? It's like a five oh, it could vary.

Michael Rymer: 49:14

I mean the I. I don't know if we I mean for a community we don't have a minimum requirement for sky quality brightness but just just imagine but what do you? What do you aim?

Bill McGeeney: 49:25

for we had good, good rules in effect everywhere, I mean I think of a five. Right now I live in like a zone I think might have transitioned into a nine this year, so five to me is like wow, I can see stars, yeah, yeah, yeah, four or five I think I mean depending on the size of the community.

Michael Rymer: 49:41

Uh, moab it's a touristy town but they have a residency of about 5 000, you know population of actual full-time people live in there and that fluctuates with the busy season, um, you know as far as how many people are contributing the light pollution. Um, but for moab I mean, yeah, they may be at a five right now. In with a little bit better uh implementation and responsible outdoor lighting, they can get it maybe closer to a four. We'll just see what their subsequent annual reports for us show and their night sky quality. You know, of course, development is going to continue to happen in towns like this and the enforcement of the ordinance coming through building codes that any future developments will have automatically require responsible outdoor lighting, the way we define it.

Bill McGeeney: 50:34

You know you want development to continue to happen in areas. You don't want to have this as a limiting factor for development, right, you just want to be able to have a responsible lighting approach to it. But I do have a last question on this. I apologize for taking a little longer for everyone else here. I thought Moab had some kind of cash rebate or some kind of financial incentive which how prevalent is something like that? Or how difficult is something like that to get an effect for communities looking to go dark sky?

Michael Rymer: 51:05

Sure, yeah, I mean we see a lot of different ideas coming through and applications for communities a rebate or a grant or some sort of. I've heard of one where a community has like an, adopt a light program. You know, so if you're a business or a very you know, perhaps well-off individual, you could adopt a street light and pay for the retrofitting of it. So I mean there's a lot of ways that people in the community can directly affect, you know, get the benefits of the lighting, have don't have to worry about the economic impact, the financial impact of it themselves, that these cities will kind of take some of the economic hit for it. Moab may have one I don't know if I can't think off the top of my head what theirs specifically is, but there are a lot of communities out there who are willing, so to involve the residents, the citizens of those communities, that they're willing to foot the bill for a little bit of it.

Bill McGeeney: 52:05

Okay, thank you, mike. Let's move on to you, betty. You're next up. We got this piece here. A dark sky, advocates say, night becoming too bright. They argue that law needs to be updated. Okay, why don't you tell us about this? And this is one of this is your part-time residence too, right?

Betty Buckley: 52:22

Yes, hi, thank you so much for having me on the program. It's so amazing to be with these wonderful people. I live in deep in the heart of Texas, but I also do have an investment property, a home in Cloudcroft, new Mexico, and so, you know, friends know that I've made, I'm a filmmaker and a teacher at Texas State University, and friends know that my film is the stars at night. So they send me stuff. So I had a friend of mine send me this article from Santa Fe, new Mexico, where they're talking about the dark sky advocates, saying, even though they've had legislation on the books, the nights are becoming too bright and they argue that the law needs updates. So what's admirable, then, makes me, you know, really happy and proud is they have had this law adopted in 1999 to regulate outdoor night lighting fixtures and enhance the state's dark sky while promoting safety, conserving energy. And enhance the state's dark sky while promoting safety, conserving energy and preserving the environment, which, for me, for 1999, is very progressive because there is a connection between safety and conserving the night sky with lighting that people just tend to, you know, people not aware of this issue tend to say, oh, it's not safe, you know, but it is and it can be. But what the article goes on to say is that about the light pollution is really rapidly increasing about 10 percent a year, they say, according to this presentation from Peter Lipskin, the vice chair of New Mexico Dark Sky, and it's because the lights have changed Right dark sky and it's because the lights have changed right. So just the fact that they're taking these steps is really exciting. I don't think it's going to the legislative session doesn't begin until January 21st, but they could be a real leader in this because looking at this, you know, awesome group of people and knowing that there's this increase in astrotourism and that is a viable business and that there's, you know this document, you know this documented scientific reasons that lack of having access to night's dark skies can affect our health, you know the word duh comes to mind for me. You know, because for me it's, there's the science, but my film is about the connection between the science and storytelling and who we are as humans, our connection to our universe and how that's important.

Betty Buckley: 55:00

I don't think anybody would argue that a national park you know national parks around the world is just one of the world's greatest ideas. Well, this is a global national park we have. You know why in the world would we pollute it and not protect it and together? So what's exciting to me, you know, with my primary home base being in Texas, is that this it's you know they're. They look at it as interstatewide.

Betty Buckley: 55:34

So when I sent this to my, my colleagues that got me involved in night sky conservation the Comal County Friends of the Night Sky I sent it to someone. And we live in a county, right. So I, we don't have a city ordinance or laws or any of that. We live in the country, right, and we love it and we really want to protect it because we absolutely should be able to see the Milky Way from where we live and we can't. And, and yet, across the hill where there's a bowl, uh, around the, the village of, uh, wimberley, uh, they can see the milky way. I'm told I haven't had a chance to go check that out. Uh, they have a night sky, you know, group um, and then I'm attending that's coming up, and and how exciting is that, it's just across the freeway from where I live. So I was very impressed that they're doing that.

Betty Buckley: 56:34

When I text this to my friend, I'm on the board with our organization. He sent back an emoji of someone you know crying because we don't have the opportunity to legislate for our county If the state doesn't take action. You know, we're not in a city, we're just in a county and so we're a group of, and a big group. So we've grown in Texas from one group I think it started maybe Michael knows more, and I think it started Dripping Springs and now there's many, many, many groups just really working on the grassroots level to make a difference. So it's sad to say to realize that unless our state takes action, that somehow I wonder if we ever would. I think that's what that emoji meant.

Bill McGeeney: 57:25

Texas is a big place.

Betty Buckley: 57:27

Yeah, and but we're, we're trying, we're trying.

Bill McGeeney: 57:32

And you've you mentioned that the idea of being able to see the Milky way. For some of you guys on the call, I know you guys can actually see the Milky way, or at least a trace Milky way, out your window. I thought it was. I had that experience this past spring, in March, when we went up to Cherry Springs. We get a cabin and it was. We had one night where it was perfect and just being upstairs, walking around in a cabin without any lights and then looking out the window and being able to see the dense star clusters. And then looking out the window and being able to see the dense star clusters. For someone who lives in a city, it's almost. It's almost criminal that some and that there's a scientific aspect of our health that John was speaking about, but to me there's mental health.

Betty Buckley: 58:37

That's as important. So you mentioned what happened for you is. You had this sense of awe. That's really important for us as human beings and I find myself rushing, you know, here and there. And the other night I came home and it'd been a stressful day. I got out of my car and I thought I'm just going to stop and take a moment and look up and I can see beautiful stars. I just can't see the Milky Way and what happened is just the feeling of like I calmed down, I felt better and I thought I really got to work on my nights. You know, I want to really work on a place I can sit and be and enjoy it more, because even though I have this, I live in a beautiful place. I want to make it more of a priority. And I think what? Also what Matthias is talking about, the growth of astrotourism. I think it's exploding. I think what's and that's so exciting and maybe that'll help us affect change right.

Bill McGeeney: 59:35

Yeah Well, thank you, betty, I really appreciate you adding that article in there. I want to add in that article also, from at least my research on that one, it appears to be a bipartisan effort too, which is more than we can say about pretty much anything in this country, and you know that's. That's pretty great, mike.

Michael Rymer: 59:52

Yes, yeah, I just want to jump in real fast. Betty, thank you for sharing that article. I work closely with that group in New Mexico and actually just the other day we had a meeting including one of the state senators who was on the Conservation Committee of the state legislators, so there's a lot of good momentum. There's even work being done with the New Mexico Oil and Gas Administration to work on oil and gas drill sites in kind of the Carlsbad area to bring better night skies to the national park there. So there's a lot going on in that state for sure.

Betty Buckley: 1:00:31

It's really exciting because I had my properties in a little village and I have this where it's very remote, it has great night skies, but the village right outside of my house posted one of those horrible mercury paper lights. So I'm like, oh great, I give them all the way here and there. That is.

Bill McGeeney: 1:00:54

Okay, Well, thank you guys. Let me Ken, Ken and Frank. You guys are my last two here, Are we okay on time? I know I'm over now.

Ken Walczak: 1:01:01

I will have to jump.

Matthias Schmitt: 1:01:02

Do you mind if I?

Bill McGeeney: 1:01:03

Yeah, let's go ahead, ken, and you brought on.

Ken Walczak: 1:01:05

Yeah, I'm good Okay.

Bill McGeeney: 1:01:07

The article that you brought Ken Walchek to. This was why Flying Insects Gather at Artificial Light Really good article, and it was kind of the year of flying insects, so why don't you talk about?

Ken Walczak: 1:01:20

it.

Ken Walczak: 1:01:20

Yeah, I love this. This came out early in 24. And I love so many things about it, um, mainly because I think it really like. I don't know. If anybody had a chance to read the paper, I would actually recommend it. I'm thinking about putting it on the um menu for any of our new students just to read through the entire thing, just because, if anything else it's, it's demonstrates, uh, just how beautiful science can be, and what I mean by that is that there's a joy to it, there's a complexity and a creativity. And then also there's just some really interesting revelations.

Ken Walczak: 1:02:00

Now, the idea that insects fly and navigate. Why do they gather at lights, for example. There's been a lot of theories over time and this is, by the way, the theory in the that's supported this paper. The research in this paper supports is not new, but what they really did an amazing job at is demonstrating it and actually, uh, showing, um, you know answering a question, you know taking away a lot of the ambiguities, um, and it just really tells a story. There are some, so what they really found was okay.

Ken Walczak: 1:02:33

So a lot of theories about why does a moth you know moth to a flame? You know that's there, why does that happen? And so they used a lot of analytical science when it came to flight dynamics and and all these other elements, uh, by using high-speed video of looking at and I encourage I can actually share one of the videos with you all um, it's so nice because you actually see these moths flying in slow motion, and when you see them flying in slow motion, they look like birds and then you realize, um, that it's all about density. To a, to an insect, especially a moth, the density of the air is almost well, actually I could say it's almost more equivalent to us in water than it is to us in the air. What you know I mean like there's a viscosity to this insects's environment and so a small, like you would think like a bird, if it sees a light and it's navigating with the light, it still feels how gravity is pulling it down so it can orient. But moths in this case, about a dozen species that tested need a little bit more than just gravity, because gravity isn't, you know, you think about a fish and water. You know like it can actually turn upside down and and you know its orientation is not as grounded to going down, and so a light can have that much more dramatic effect on an insect.

Ken Walczak: 1:03:58

And so what they found was it's not that, uh, for example, the these moths are going just right to the light. They did some tests where they were like okay, does the sky, for example, attract if it was brightened, for example, how does a moth fly through that situation? And they did many tests and they found, okay, they just orient fine if there's a uniform light above them, like a lit sheet, and they fly just fine through that environment. But then when they lit the sheet on the bottom, then moths were crashing and crashing, and crashing and they're like okay, so there's something about light being from below or not from above, let's say.

Ken Walczak: 1:04:39

And then they did all these experiments where they had variety of placements of light bulbs, which so now you have a point source, so let's say that's like a street light or some other house light. And what they found was that there are three main activities that the moths would do. One is orbiting, so they would spiral around the light. One would be stalling, where the insect would fly up and then roll underneath and then they'd fall from flight because they're flying upside down.

Ken Walczak: 1:05:10

And then the other was an inverted behavior, which is a similar kind of thing, where they actually turn and rotate and then keep flying, but they're flying as though they were going up, but they're actually going down now, and the whole mechanism of this is what they call a dorsal light response. So what's happening is these, uh, insects are actually using light, putting it behind them and saying that they're back, in a sense saying that's how I navigate, because you can imagine a moon, stars or anything bright in the night sky is something that helps them more. You know, like to help assist with that gravity, uh, you know figuring out gravity. But it's also saying okay, now I can orient myself. So as soon as you have that light that you can. You know, moths don't fly above the moon, so it's not a natural thing for them. And suddenly, when they have this light that they're going around and they're like, oh, the moon's changing the position, so they, they will, it will disrupt their, it literally entraps them in a way that it's. It's saying it's like a, their navigation system has just been upended.

Ken Walczak: 1:06:10

So I then the other thing. I want to quote one thing from this paper, because it says so much about how interesting research is it's not just the results and it's under methodology. They actually have an animal husbandry section and um, so what they? One of the the lines from description is um, moths were fed as adults were provided a half halved organic bananas, and then dragonflies were hand fed uh, hand fed during the few days in the lab. It's's like I just picture an intern, you know, a grad student or something that feeding dragonflies with a little spoon and stuff like that. So I bring a small snack to the meal, to the buffet, and I hope you kind of enjoy it.

Bill McGeeney: 1:06:58

That's a good one, Ken. Thank you for bringing that one Talking about the feeding of small hands right. I had Traviscore describe. Help describe how you put radio frequency devices on moths, like how the hell, do you fit that?

Ken Walczak: 1:07:14

little thing on a moth that was the jackal and it wasn't anything. Jacqueline and and tobias dagan, uh, from germany. They actually were putting radio transmitters on moths, exactly.

Bill McGeeney: 1:07:25

But that's a great one. Thank you, ken, and I know you got to drop off, so see you and have a great holiday. Frank, let's get to you.

Bill McGeeney: 1:07:34

You have a the last article here. I actually have one more, but I'll talk about that real quickly at the end, but this one excessive light pollution may increase risk of Alzheimer's, especially in younger people. So, frank Torino, welcome back. And if you heard some dings earlier, that was Frank going in and out. Oh, sorry about that. It's all good, that was making some noise on my side too, don't worry about it. All right, why don't you? Tell us about this article.

Frank Turina: 1:08:02

So I'm glad that John kind of talked about his article before mine. I think this is a good sort of side dish to his main entree. One of the things that he talked about was that there are a lot of these studies that use satellite data and try to correlate that with certain health outcomes, and this is one of those studies. This study kind of follows up on a study that I think it was the first one to make some links between light and Alzheimer's disease. That was published about a year ago in 2023. This one just came out in Frontiers in Neuroscience in September of 2024, so about a year later, and it kind of follows up and goes into a little more detail and gives a little more context and understanding about that connection between light pollution and Alzheimer's disease. What the authors found from the study again, what they did was they looked at satellite data, they ranked the different states in the United States per how much light exposure the average person gets in that state and then looked at epidemiological data and the occurrence of Alzheimer's disease and a whole bunch of other contributing factors to Alzheimer's disease. So one of the things that I think was an improvement in this study is that they did look at a lot of potentially co-founding variables or other variables that might be interfering or adding to that connection between Alzheimer's and light, interfering or adding to that connection between Alzheimer's and light, and so they found that higher outdoor nighttime light was associated with higher prevalence of Alzheimer's. And there were again they looked at a bunch of different contributing, other contributing factors to Alzheimer's and they found that atrial fibrillation, diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension and stroke were associated more strongly with Alzheimer's than light pollution. However, light pollution was more strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease than alcohol abuse, chronic kidney disease, depression, heart failure and obesity. And so you know, kind of indicating that in terms of these potentially contributing factors to Alzheimer's disease, light pollution is up there right, it's a strong contributing factor in light disease and I think one of the other things that was kind of startling was that nighttime light exposure was more strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease prevalence in those under age 65 than any other contributing factor that they looked at. So for some reason, if you're under 65, those other contributing factors play less of a role but light pollution kind of jumps to the top in terms of the most significant. So I think these you know data and these types of studies, although, you know, given the limitations that John talked about, you know I think that they do kind of point the direction towards more research and again, this one was following up on some research that was done in 2023. So I think, as this progresses and more research teams start looking at this connection, I think we're going to get more and more refined results and more of a deeper understanding of how Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases are associated with light pollution.

Frank Turina: 1:11:57

The other thing that kind of caught my eye with this, or made me start thinking about it, was the power that these types of associations have with the public right Things that drive policy creation and policy development.

Frank Turina: 1:12:17

One of the most probably effective motivators for people to do something about an environmental contaminant or environmental threat is this association with disease scientists identifying associations between certain diseases and certain environmental factors and then action being taken to control those environmental factors.

Frank Turina: 1:12:46

So I think these types of studies have a lot of potential for motivating both the public and elected officials to kind of do something and implement policy to minimize the impact or the exposure to artificial light.

Frank Turina: 1:13:05

So I think that's for me, one of the more, I guess, important roles for this type of research is to kind of get that, you know, to get the balls rolling, get the wheel rolling for those types of policy development when people start understanding that there's a direct effect between you know my light at night, exposure to light at night and developing Alzheimer's disease, especially if you have other pre you know conditions that can increase your the potential of you getting Alzheimer's. So I think that's a really strong motivator for policy development and for a change. And you know we all talk about. We need to change the public's perception, we need to grow the understanding of this, the importance of dark skies and avoidance of light pollution, and this is one of the ways that we can do that right. We can identify these connections between light pollution and your health and that is a real strong motivator for action and change.

Bill McGeeney: 1:14:14

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, frank, for bringing this one up. Action and change yeah, thank you. Thank you, frank, for bringing this one up. And I guess the question I have going back since I know John you spoke about before you know this would it be fair that this type of research is kind of is the the noise in the background kind of indicated from other drivers?

John Barentine: 1:14:35

I certainly think so, bill, and what I was kind of getting at earlier was we need that last intermediate piece.

John Barentine: 1:14:44

I do think that there is truth behind the satellite studies, like Frank is pointing out here, and, as he said, alzheimer's and similar neurodegenerative diseases really jumped out in this one, whereas some of the other things they were looking for didn't.

John Barentine: 1:15:01

It will not surprise me at all if this finding holds up, because it looks like disrupting the circadian rhythm has something to do with the process by which the brain is flushing out these proteins that build up with age and can cause dementia and Alzheimer's disease. So if people in their younger years are experiencing circadian disruption because they're exposed to light at night and that's gradually interfering with the process, it may not yield a result until they're in their 60s or 70s or 80s. I won't be surprised by that at all, and an early indicator of that might be the satellite measurements of light at night, and that may be how this is working its way out of the noise and we're beginning to pick up on this signal. So I hope they will follow up on this and, like I said, it will not surprise me if this finding holds up.

Frank Turina: 1:16:04

Yeah, and I think it's also important to point out that these types of studies, where we have the satellite data and we're doing these correlation analyses, is an improvement over where we were five, six years ago. Right, some of the early studies that linked light pollution or light, I should say to some diseases, like some cancers, some cancers of the reproductive system, those were done using shift workers, right, so they looked at how they had a higher prevalence of these types of cancers in nurses and other shift workers who were exposed to light at night. You know, satellite data to get a better idea of just, you know, sort of a real world condition is a big improvement. And so I think, as John was saying, I think this will continue to evolve and improve so that we can make some much more robust, do some robust studies and get some robust analyses to be able to say a lot more and a lot more definitively talk about this connection between light and neurodegenerative diseases.

Bill McGeeney: 1:17:26

One last piece here, and this is from Diane Ternshek, who couldn't be with us tonight. She's traveling and Diane was back on the show the show you're on, karen, back in January of 2023, 2024. What year are we? In 2024, there we go. Uh, space trash is falling from the sky, and that's not the worst of it. Uh, so we have an issue now of we're launching so much stuff up that, uh, it's just going to be de-orbited and just burn up in the atmosphere or land, in the ocean or, in some cases, as the article pointed out, lands on people's houses. I'm going to bounce this one over to you, john, or yana. You're still with us. You guys, what do we do about this space trash problem? Is this part of what you're talking about before, yana, with the un approach to kind of creating a more normalized pathway for us to de-orbit some of these things?

Yana Yakushina: 1:18:22

There are a lot of guidelines already related to space debris which, for example, developed by NASA or ESA, european Space Agency but they again volunteer, so they're trying to.

Yana Yakushina: 1:18:36

Like most of it is circulated around all the objects which we're sending on orbit, we will have an opportunity to put it back safely so to have a certain level of control. But when we talk about space debris in general, there's a lot of objects which are circulating there out of space and we have zero control of like all satellites or all space objects sent by USSR which are circulating there out of space and we have zero control of like all satellites or all space objects sent by USSR or like United States back in the days at the beginning of the space race. And this is the biggest problem and I will not answer on the technical aspects of it, but we are testing different solutions how to kind of start to collect the space debris and then land it safely back so it doesn't crash on somebody's house. But yeah, it still remains an issue, but maybe John knows more the technical side of it. But I know that we tested a lot of different things which didn't work out, so maybe there is other perspectives as well.

Bill McGeeney: 1:19:41

Yeah, it feels like a problem. You have to engineer a solution to Go ahead.

John Barentine: 1:19:46

John and people are looking into exactly that, what it's being referred to as active debris removal, where, through different ideas, you go up, basically, and you cause those pieces of debris to come back down in one way or another. No one has really demonstrated that yet and it's unclear whether it will scale up. To me, this is a supply and demand problem. You have to deal with the debris that you already have up there, as Jana said, and try to bring it down, but also making sure that you're not generating more of it. One of the ways we can do that, as she said, is what's increasingly being called design for demise. So you build your spacecraft with a propulsion system that allows you to bring it down when the satellite's mission is over, so you don't leave it up there where it could become a target to generate further debris.

John Barentine: 1:20:37

What I was talking about earlier on in the show, about this notion that we would come up with some sort of best practice that substitutes for a really rigid legal framework, something like through a treaty, to the United States credit.

John Barentine: 1:20:50

We looked at the existing best practice, which said 25 years after end of mission was an appropriate time to come back to earth, and we've been requiring companies getting launch licenses here to show that they can do it in five years. It's a semi-voluntary thing, it's not hard-coded into our law, but other countries the European Union, you know are looking at that and beginning to put that into their practice so that now even in the business community, they're embracing this idea that five years is a reasonable amount of time and you really need to bring your spacecraft down after that to reduce the debris risk, and that is certainly going to help. There's always the possibility of a wild card out there. Help, there's always the possibility of a wild card out there. The thing that keeps me up at night are disruptive incidences like in 2021, when the Russian Federation tested an anti-satellite weapon that was launched from the ground and destroyed an old Soviet satellite, created thousands of pieces of debris, was very irresponsible. Other countries have done it too, so it's not like they were the only ones. No-transcript.

Matthias Schmitt: 1:22:34

We have real-life examples for all these orbital debris. Just watch the first 10 minutes of Wall-E.

Bill McGeeney: 1:22:43

It's true, yep Yara.

Yana Yakushina: 1:22:49

Yeah, I just wanted to add what John was saying. It's a really small comment, but when we are not dealing with space debris and we indeed keep sending more and more space objects from small satellites to mega constellations and we talked on this podcast about space-based solar panels, which are going to be giant objects we're basically impacting the future space exploration and under outer space treaty there is a right for space exploration. So we're kind of going to potential legal conflicts here which can actually impact and maybe make it faster that we'll adopt certain binding agreements. I think we'll keep going with all these space activities that fast, excellent. Well, I want to thank all of you guys for joining me for this little keep going with all these space activities that fast, excellent.

Bill McGeeney: 1:23:39

Well, I want to thank all of you guys for joining me for this little holiday potluck. We had some big meals, a lot of snacks, a lot of tasty little tasty treats here. To rehash, everyone on the show. John Barentine, I think you need no introduction from Dark Sky Consulting. Hopefully you're not in that shopping center, the cash shopping center anymore, I believe moved over. If you at home aren't aware of that, just have to go back and dial to the last episode when John was on. Uh, karen, karen asked for all glow from dark source. Uh, you know, karen, where can people find you out at?

Kerem Asfuroglu: 1:24:18

Talk that sourcecom, I mean based in both in Ireland and the UK. And yeah, we're a lighting design practice driven by social and environmental values. And yeah, give us a shout. And thanks again for having us, bill, this has been fun and it's actually a great catch up with, you know, some usual suspects and old faces.

Bill McGeeney: 1:24:42

Betty Buckley stars in Night Movie. If you're interested in learning more about that, highly recommend that movie.

Betty Buckley: 1:24:49

Thank you so much, bill, and just echo what Karim just said. The film is actually in 400 universities through Alexander Street. It's free through there for using in the classroom and small groups and otherwise it's thestarsatnightorg and we announce all of our screenings. We have two coming up in the Big Bend in the spring and a lot pending, hopefully this broadcast. So thank you.

Bill McGeeney: 1:25:21

Matias Schmidt over at Cedar Breaks National Monument. Right, it's a monument, isn't it?

Matthias Schmitt: 1:25:26

It's a monument. Yes, it's a marketing thing. We're not a national park.

Bill McGeeney: 1:25:31

And you're doing star tours now too, right?

Matthias Schmitt: 1:25:33

I do star tours, yeah, in Stargazing Zion and Stargazing J-Tree.

Bill McGeeney: 1:25:38

That sounds great. That sounds like a lot of fun.

Matthias Schmitt: 1:25:40

It's a lot of fun.

Bill McGeeney: 1:25:43

And thanks for driving all the way back from California just to be on the show.

Matthias Schmitt: 1:25:45

Really appreciate it, matthias hey you're so important to me, we want to miss you.

Bill McGeeney: 1:25:51

Frank Torino over there at the environmental. Are you an adjunct professor?

Frank Turina: 1:25:59

I am, yeah, at the University of Denver.

Bill McGeeney: 1:26:01

That's right, Okay excellent Michael Reimer, dark Sky, and then we have Yana Yukishina, who does a lot of the research. Congratulations on your great acceptance to be published right. So it's going to be coming out. When should we expect to see your paper on some of the space law?

Yana Yakushina: 1:26:21

I mean I've written a paper on classification of light pollution regulations so it's brought in space law rather all the light pollution stuff you can find, and I try to put it in some categories. Hopefully it's going to be useful for researchers and policymakers. But I hope to do. I just signed the agreement, so hopefully to be on before the new year or early next year. Yeah, thank you for having me.

Bill McGeeney: 1:26:48

It was fun. And, of course, ken Wachek, who had to get out of here early, went a little long, so I really appreciate everyone for hanging out. Thank you again. Thank you, the went a little long, so I really appreciate everyone for hanging out. Thank you again. Thank you, the listener. Have a safe, healthy new year. One last time. I'm Bill McGinney, asking you only to shine the light where it's needed. Happy 2025, everyone.