If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun's light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don't think of ourselves as diurnal beings. Yet it's the only way to explain what we've done to the night: We've engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.
如果人类真的在月亮和星星的照耀下待在家里，我们就会快乐地进入黑暗，午夜的世界对我们来说就像对这个星球上大量夜间活动的物种一样可见。然而，我们是白天活动的生物，眼睛适应阳光。这是一个基本的进化事实，尽管我们大多数人并不认为自己是白天活动的人。然而，这是解释我们对夜晚所做的事情的唯一方法：我们设计了它，让它充满光线来接纳我们。
The benefits of this kind of engineering come with consequences - called light pollution - whose effects scientists are only now beginning to study. Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky.Ⅲ-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and completely changes the light levels - and light rhythms - to which many forms of life, including, ourselves, have adapted. Wherever human light spills into the natural world, some aspect or life is affected.
这种设计的好处带来了一些后果一 称为光污染一 科学家们现在才刚刚开始研究其影响。光污染很大程度上是由于糟糕的照明设计造成的，这种设计使人造光向外和向上照射到天空中。Ⅲ设计好的照明可以洗去夜晚的黑暗，彻底改变光线水平以及许多种生命形式（包括我们自己）已经适应的光线节奏。无论人类的光线照向自然界何处，某些方面或某些生物都会受到影响。
In most cities the sky looks as though it has been emptied of stars, leaving behind a vacant haze that mirrors our fear of the dark. We've grown so used to this orange haze that the original gloiy of an unlit night, - dark enough for the planet Venus to throw shadow on Earth, is wholly beyond our experience, beyond memory almost.
在大多数城市，天空看起来好像已经没有了星星，留下了一片空旷的薄雾，反映了我们对黑暗的恐惧。我们已经习惯了这种橙色的雾霾，以至于在一个没有灯光的夜晚，黑暗到足以让金星在地球上投下阴影，这几乎完全超出了我们的经验，超出了记忆。
We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further form the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing, Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms. Migrating at night, birds tend to collide with brightly lit tall buildings.
我们照亮了夜晚，仿佛这是一个无人居住的国家，然而事实并非如此。仅在哺乳动物中，夜间活动的物种数量就让人吃惊。光是一种强大的生物力量，对许多物种来说，它就像磁铁。这种影响如此强大，以至于科学家们说鸣禽和海鸟被陆地上的探照灯或海洋石油平台上的气体照明弹“捕获”。鸟类在夜间迁徙时，往往会与灯光明亮的高层建筑相撞。
Frogs living near brightly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels that are as much as a million times righter than normal, throwing nearly every aspect of their behavior out of joint including most other creatures, we do need darkness. Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself.
生活在光线明亮的高速公路附近的青蛙夜间的光线水平比正常情况高出一百万倍，几乎影响了它们行为的各个方面，包括大多数其他生物，我们确实需要黑暗。黑暗对我们的生物福利、内部生物钟，就像光本身一样重要。
Living in a glare of our making ,we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural heritage—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy arching overhead.
生活在我们制造的耀眼光芒中，我们与我们的进化和文化遗产——恒星的光芒和昼夜的节奏——隔绝了。从非常真实的意义上说，光污染导致我们失去了我们在宇宙中的真实位置，忘记了我们存在的规模——最好是以银河系的边缘在头顶上拱起的深夜的尺度来衡量。
网友评论