The health effects of a world without darkness – Rebecca Boyle – Aeon

Rebecca Boyle is a freelance journalist in St Louis, Missouri.

丽贝卡·博伊尔是密苏里州圣路易斯的一名自由记者。

She writes for science magazines for adults and children, and her blog, Eek Squad, is published by Popular Science .

她为成人和儿童的科学杂志撰稿，她的博客 Eek Squad 由《大众科学》出版。

Sound dominated my senses as we left the village of San Pedro de Atacama and walked into the desert night.

当我们离开圣佩德罗德阿塔卡马村，走进沙漠的夜色时，声音占据了我的感官。

The crunch of shoes on gravel underlay our voices, which were hushed to avoid waking any households or street dogs.

我们的声音被鞋子踩在碎石路上的嘎吱声所掩盖，我们的声音被压得很低，以免吵醒任何家庭或流浪狗。

Our small group of astronomy writers was escaping from light and, without any flashlights or streetlamps, we struggled to see, so our other senses were heightened.

我们这一小群天文学作家正在躲避光线，没有任何手电筒或路灯，我们很难看清东西，所以我们的其他感官都增强了。

Land that looked red by day was now monochromatic, the rods in our retinas serving as our only visual input.

白天看起来红色的土地现在变成了单色，我们视网膜上的视杆细胞是我们唯一的视觉输入。

After about 15 minutes of hiking, we stopped to take some pictures of the sky.

徒步大约15分钟后，我们停下来拍了一些天空的照片。

I fumbled with my gear and tried to get my bearings, but everything was alien.

我摸索着我的装备，试图弄清楚自己的方位，但一切都很陌生。

I was horribly jet-lagged after 10 hours hunched against the window of a 757, another two-hour flight north from Santiago and a two-hour bus ride, and it wan’t just my oxygen-hungry brain that put me out of sorts.

在 757 飞机上弯腰靠窗 10 个小时、从圣地亚哥向北飞行 2 小时、乘坐 2 小时巴士之后，我感到严重时差反应，而不仅仅是我缺氧的大脑让我感到不舒服。

The Atacama Desert looked like Mars as drawn by Dr Seuss; I was surrounded by wrong-coloured cliffs and swirling rock formations.

阿塔卡马沙漠看起来就像苏斯博士画的火星；我周围都是颜色错误的悬崖和旋转的岩层。

But I was determined to photograph something even more bizarre: the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy you can see only from the southern hemisphere.

但我决心拍摄一些更奇怪的东西：大麦哲伦星云，一个只能从南半球才能看到的矮星系。

I perched my camera on a rock and aimed at the sky, but the cosmic smudge would not resolve in my viewfinder.

我把相机放在一块岩石上，瞄准天空，但取景器中的宇宙污迹无法消失。

I stood, brushed dirt from my jeans, and looked up.

我站起来，掸去牛仔裤上的污垢，然后抬起头来。

The unfamiliar sky momentarily took away what little breath I had left at 8,000 feet in elevation.

陌生的天空瞬间带走了我在八千英尺海拔上仅存的一点呼吸。

Above the horizon was the conspicuous Southern Cross.

地平线上方是显眼的南十字星。

Orion was there, too, but looked as disoriented as I felt, upside down to the world.

猎户座也在那儿，但看起来和我一样迷失了方向，与世界颠倒了。

And there were so many constellations I’d never seen, with hopeful, Latinate names such as Dorado and Reticulum.

还有很多我从未见过的星座，它们的拉丁名字充满希望，比如金鱼座和网纹座。

Countless stars blazed into view as I stared into the smear of the Milky Way.

当我凝视着银河系时，无数的星星闪耀在我的视野中。

To most people who have travelled outside the developed world – whether to camp or to meditate or to hunt – such bright and plentiful stars are a glorious sight.

对于大多数到过发达国家之外旅行的人来说——无论是露营、冥想还是狩猎——如此明亮而丰富的星星都是一个辉煌的景象。

But this beauty instilled in me a creeping sense of guilt.

但这种美丽给我灌输了一种令人毛骨悚然的负罪感。

At home, 1,500 miles north, I wouldn’t recognise such spangled heavens.

在北方 1,500 英里的家乡，我认不出如此闪亮的天空。

From where I live in the American Midwest, the stars might as well not exist.

从我居住的美国中西部地区来看，星星可能根本就不存在。

After journeying millions of years, their light is swallowed by city glare and my porch lantern.

经过数百万年的旅行，它们的光芒被城市的眩光和我的门廊灯笼吞噬。

Those that make it through will still fail: not even bright Betelgeuse can outshine my iPhone.

那些成功的人仍然会失败：即使是明亮的参宿四也无法超越我的 iPhone。

Yet I am an astronomy writer, a person who thinks about stars and planets all the time.

然而我是一个天文学作家，一个一直思考恒星和行星的人。

What does my neglect of the night sky say about the rest of humanity?

我对夜空的忽视对人类其他人意味着什么？

‘We are all descended from astronomers,’ the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson intones in the rebooted version of the TV show Cosmos .

“我们都是天文学家的后裔，”天体物理学家尼尔·德格拉斯·泰森在重启版的电视节目《宇宙》中吟诵道。

This is as poetic as it is true.

这既诗意又真实。

Everyone owns the night sky; it was the one natural realm all our ancestors could see and know intimately.

每个人都拥有夜空；这是我们所有祖先都能亲眼目睹和了解的唯一自然境界。

No river, no grand mountain or canyon, not even the oceans can claim that.

没有河流，没有雄伟的山脉或峡谷，甚至海洋也无法做到这一点。

But since Edison’s light bulbs colonised our cities, the vast majority of humans has ceased to see those skies.

但自从爱迪生的灯泡占领了我们的城市以来，绝大多数人类已经看不到那些天空了。

More than 60 per cent of the world, and fully 99 per cent of the US and Europe, lives under a yellowy sky polluted with light.

世界上超过 60% 的地区，以及美国和欧洲 99% 的地区，生活在被光线污染的黄色天空下。

For many of us, the only place to see the milky backbone of our own galaxy is on the ceiling of a planetarium.

对于我们许多人来说，唯一能看到银河系银河主干的地方就是天文馆的天花板。

Although humans are diurnal, factories and Twitter and hospitals and CNN are not, so we must conquer the darkness.

虽然人类是白天活动的，但工厂、Twitter、医院和 CNN 却不是，所以我们必须征服黑暗。

As a result, almost everything industrialised people build is lit up at night.

因此，工业化人们建造的几乎所有东西在晚上都会被点亮。

Malls, hospitals, car dealerships.

商场、医院、汽车经销店。

Streets, bridges, air and sea ports.

街道、桥梁、机场和海港。

Buildings on a skyline.

天际线上的建筑物。

These artificial lights identify our cities all the way from the moon.

这些人造光从月球一直识别着我们的城市。

If aliens ever do drop by, this might be their first sign that someone is home.

如果外星人真的来访，这可能是他们在家的第一个迹象。

But cosmology, the study and interpretation of the universe, has always depended on a star-choked dark sky.

但宇宙学，即对宇宙的研究和解释，一直依赖于恒星遮蔽的黑暗天空。

Ancient civilisations from the Greeks to the Pawnee looked to the stars and saw not only creation tales, but active participants in their lives.

从希腊人到波尼人的古代文明，仰望星空，不仅看到了创世故事，还看到了生活中的积极参与者。

Christians, who invest great meaning in the good of light and the evil of darkness, spread a starry message, too: the star of Bethlehem as a beacon to salvation.

基督徒对光明的善行和黑暗的邪恶赋予了巨大的意义，他们也传播了一条繁星般的信息：伯利恒之星是救赎的灯塔。

A millennium and a half later, Galileo looked up and saw a new version of the cosmos, breaking the dawn of modern science.

一千五百年后，伽利略抬头看到了一个新版本的宇宙，打破了现代科学的曙光。

And Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe by the candlelight of supernovas.

埃德温·哈勃通过超新星的烛光发现了宇宙的膨胀。

All of this happened under virginal skies and, by any measure, we don’t have those anymore.

所有这一切都发生在原始的天空下，无论如何，我们已经不再拥有这些了。

We look at our glowing rectangles, and we opt out of that shared heritage.

我们看着发光的矩形，然后选择放弃这种共同的传统。

Nowhere is light pollution more apparent, almost achingly so, than in satellite images of the Earth from space.

没有什么地方的光污染比从太空拍摄的地球卫星图像更明显，甚至令人痛苦。

The continental United States seems to split in half: the eastern side is brighter than the west, except for the klieg lights of Las Vegas.

美国大陆似乎一分为二：东边比西边亮，除了拉斯维加斯的灯光。

Highways innervate America, connecting luminous dots of small towns and big cities.

高速公路遍布美国，连接着小城镇和大城市的亮点。

Across the Atlantic, Europe shimmers.

大西洋彼岸，欧洲熠熠生辉。

Moscow is a radiant nine-pointed star.

莫斯科是一颗光芒四射的九角星。

The Nile Delta glows like a dandelion sprouting from mostly indigo Africa.

尼罗河三角洲像一朵从大部分靛蓝非洲发芽的蒲公英一样闪闪发光。

Farther east, Hong Kong and Shanghai are ablaze, and the demilitarised zone separates dark North Korea from South Korea more cleanly than if the peninsula had been cleft in two.

再往东，香港和上海正在熊熊燃烧，非军事区将黑暗的朝鲜与韩国分开，比半岛被一分为二还要干净。

Developed society, it’s clear, is where the light is.

显然，发达社会就是光明所在。

Human-controlled light has pierced the night for thousands of years, long before Edison.

人类控制的光已经穿透黑夜数千年，早在爱迪生之前。

Campfires warmed our ancestors’ feet and cooked their meals; the Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues in his book Catching Fire (2009) that gathering around a flame to eat and to commune with others is, in fact, what made us human.

篝火温暖了我们祖先的脚并为他们做饭；哈佛大学人类学家理查德·兰厄姆 (Richard Wrangham) 在他的著作《星火燎原》(Catching Fire, 2009) 中指出，事实上，聚集在火焰周围吃饭和与他人交流正是我们成为人类的原因。

Not just fellowship but safety has long been the primary rationale for pushing back the night.

长期以来，不仅仅是团契，安全也是推迟夜晚的主要原因。

‘Evil spirits love not the smell of lamps,’ as Plato put it.

正如柏拉图所说，“邪灵不喜欢灯的气味”。

Comforting, lambent lamplight led us safely home by tattling on the people and potholes and animals that would otherwise do us harm.

令人安慰的、柔和的灯光引导我们安全回家，我们对那些可能伤害我们的人、坑洼和动物进行了窃窃私语。

By the early 17th century, residents of cities such as Paris and London were admonished to keep lights burning in the windows of all houses that faced the streets, as the historian A Roger Ekirch notes in his book At Day ’ s Close: Night in Times Past (2005).

正如历史学家罗杰·埃基奇 (A Roger Ekirch) 在其著作《日终时：过去的夜晚》(At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past)（2005 年）中所指出的那样，到了 17 世纪初，巴黎和伦敦等城市的居民被告诫要让所有面向街道的房屋的窗户保持亮灯状态。

Taxpayers funded oil lamps and candlelit lanterns for the avenues, while only genteel households could afford fine beeswax or spermaceti candles; most people relied on tallow, made from animal fat.

纳税人资助大道上的油灯和烛光灯笼，而只有上流家庭才能买得起精美的蜂蜡或鲸蜡蜡烛；大多数人依赖由动物脂肪制成的牛脂。

Despite their utility, these artificial lights were sources of danger in their own right.

尽管它们很实用，但这些人造光本身就是危险源。

Huge swathes of cities – notably London and Chicago – were consumed in conflagrations that started as accidents, born of the necessity of using flames to see.

大片城市 — — 尤其是伦敦和芝加哥 — — 被大火吞噬，这场大火最初是由于需要使用火焰来观察而引发的事故。

By the 1800s, gas lamps reduced fire risks, but cities were by no means safer from crime; gaslit London in the late 1880s, full of foggy halos casting shadows down dark alleys, is as famous for murder as anything else.

到了 1800 年代，煤气灯降低了火灾风险，但城市并没有因此远离犯罪。 1880 年代末，煤气灯下的伦敦，充满雾气的光环，在黑暗的小巷里投下阴影，与其他事物一样以谋杀而闻名。

Even now, artificial light provides an artificial sense of security.

即使现在，人造光也提供了一种人造的安全感。

A 1997 report from the US National Institute of Justice found no conclusive correlation between night-time lighting and crime rates.

美国国家司法研究所 1997 年的一份报告发现，夜间照明与犯罪率之间没有确实的相关性。

The International Dark Sky Association, a dedicated group of night-time advocates, points out that bright, glaring lamps create sharper contrasts between light and darkness, blinding drivers and homeowners alike.

国际黑暗天空协会是一个专门的夜间倡导者组织，它指出，明亮、刺眼的灯光会在明暗之间造成更鲜明的对比，使司机和房主眼花缭乱。

And even so – what price safety!

即便如此——多么安全的价格啊！

A young but rapidly growing field of research suggests that night-time light itself is far more dangerous than the dark.

一个年轻但快速发展的研究领域表明，夜间灯光本身比黑暗更危险。

In a 2012 report, an American Medical Association committee called electric lighting a ‘man-made self-experiment’ creating potentially harmful health effects.

在 2012 年的一份报告中，美国医学会委员会称电照明是一种“人造的自我实验”，会对健康产生潜在的有害影响。

Humans, and everything else that lives on this planet with us, evolved during billions of years along a reliable cycle of day and night, with clear boundaries between them.

人类以及与我们一起生活在这个星球上的其他一切生物，在数十亿年的时间里沿着可靠的昼夜循环进化，它们之间有着清晰的界限。

Staunching the flood of artificial light can help restore this divide.

阻止人造光的泛滥可以帮助恢复这种鸿沟。

Our well-being, and that of our fellow creatures, might depend on us doing so – or at the very least trying.

我们以及我们同胞的福祉可能取决于我们这样做——或者至少是尝试这样做。

The loss of night-time darkness neglects our shared past, but it might very well cut short our futures too.

夜间黑暗的消失忽视了我们共同的过去，但它也很可能缩短我们的未来。

T he midnight desert was quiet while I knelt with my camera last spring, but the Atacama was far from asleep.

去年春天，当我拿着相机跪下时，午夜的沙漠很安静，但阿塔卡马还远没有睡着。

Beetles and red scorpions scuttled across the dirt.

甲虫和红蝎子在泥土上奔跑。

Vallenar toads crouched on the lomas .

瓦伦纳尔蟾蜍蹲在洛马斯上。

South American grey foxes sniffed the earth, hunting furry viscachas and Darwin’s leaf-eared mice.

南美灰狐嗅探大地，捕猎毛茸茸的内脏和达尔文叶耳鼠。

Great horned owls circled overhead, hunting the rodents and the foxes.

大角猫头鹰在头顶盘旋，捕食啮齿动物和狐狸。

Nocturnal animals such as these make up 30 per cent of all vertebrates and 60 per cent of all invertebrates on Earth, according to an estimate by the German biologist Franz Hölker and colleagues.

根据德国生物学家 Franz Hölker 及其同事的估计，此类夜行动物占地球上所有脊椎动物的 30% 和所有无脊椎动物的 60%。

These night-dwellers are the most obvious victims of artificial light.

这些夜行者是人造光最明显的受害者。

Light pollution interferes with their natural rhythms in myriad ways.

光污染以多种方式干扰他们的自然节奏。

To gauge levels of light pollution, scientists use lux, which is a measurement of illuminance that counts how many photons per second strike our eyes.

为了衡量光污染的程度，科学家们使用勒克斯（lux），这是一种照度测量方法，用于计算每秒有多少光子射入我们的眼睛。

As an example, the planet Venus, at its brightest, produces 0.0001 lux.

例如，金星在最亮时产生 0.0001 勒克斯的亮度。

In the natural nightscape, plants and animals are exposed to light levels that max out around 0.1 to 0.3 lux, during the week around full moon.

在自然夜景中，满月前后一周，植物和动物暴露在最高约 0.1 至 0.3 勒克斯的光照水平下。

By contrast, a typical shopping mall gushes 10 to 20 lux at night.

相比之下，典型的购物中心在夜间的亮度为 10 至 20 勒克斯。

That is 200,000 times brighter than the illuminance of a moonless evening.

这比无月夜晚的照度亮 200,000 倍。

For migratory birds that fly at night, artificial light is a deadly siren.

对于夜间飞行的候鸟来说，人造光是致命的警报。

In New York every September, columns of light shine skyward in tribute to the destroyed World Trade Center towers.

每年九月，纽约都会有光柱直射天空，向被毁坏的世贸中心塔楼致敬。

Tens of thousands of migrating birds, trying to navigate by the moon and stars, fly into the beams and circle, zombie-like, until someone shuts the lights off.

数以万计的候鸟试图通过月亮和星星来导航，飞入光束并像僵尸一样盘旋，直到有人关掉灯。

Birds also collide with glittering buildings and lighthouses and are stunned, falling to their deaths.

鸟类也会撞上闪闪发光的建筑物和灯塔，并被惊呆并坠落而死。

It is such a widespread problem that cities from Toronto to Chicago adopt lights-out campaigns during peak migrations.

这是一个非常普遍的问题，从多伦多到芝加哥，许多城市都在移民高峰期间采取了熄灯活动。

In mammals, from mice to men, the effects of melatonin suppression might be far worse

在哺乳动物中，从小鼠到男性，褪黑激素抑制的影响可能要严重得多

Sea turtles also need a dark sky atlas to find their way.

海龟还需要黑暗的天空图集来找到方向。

Newly hatched on the Atlantic coast, they are confused by beaches bathed in light and follow a false moon, turning away from the safety of the sea.

它们在大西洋沿岸刚刚孵化，它们被沐浴在阳光下的海滩所迷惑，跟随虚假的月亮，远离了大海的安全。

Florida wildlife officials and even NASA have spent decades trying to build better beach embankments, using old railcars, driftwood and sand dunes to mask the artificial light streaming from highways and launch pads.

佛罗里达州野生动物官员甚至美国宇航局花了几十年的时间试图建造更好的海滩堤坝，使用旧的火车、浮木和沙丘来掩盖从高速公路和发射台发出的人造光。

Almost all bat species are nocturnal, hunting out insects, frogs, nectar, pollen, fruit and other bats when it is dark.

几乎所有蝙蝠种类都是夜间活动，在天黑时捕食昆虫、青蛙、花蜜、花粉、水果和其他蝙蝠。

Omnivorous bats use echolocation rather than vision to track their prey, but extra light is far from helpful.

杂食性蝙蝠使用回声定位而不是视觉来追踪猎物，但额外的光线根本没有帮助。

Insect-eating bats chose different foraging routes to avoid just 0.4 lux of light, according to a 2009 study led by Emma Stone of the University of Bristol.

布里斯托大学的艾玛·斯通 (Emma Stone) 2009 年领导的一项研究表明，食虫蝙蝠会选择不同的觅食路线来避开 0.4 勒克斯的光线。

Fruit bats avoid the glare, too.

果蝠也会避开强光。

Costa Rican short-tailed bats, given a choice between pepper plants growing in the dark and plants illuminated by sodium lamps, chose the dark twice as often.

哥斯达黎加短尾蝙蝠在黑暗中生长的胡椒植物和钠灯照明的植物之间进行选择时，选择黑暗的频率是其两倍。

There are ecological consequences: changing their flight paths alters the ‘seed rain’, showered by defecating bats, that can be crucial to recolonising clear-cut rainforest.

这会产生生态后果：改变它们的飞行路径会改变蝙蝠排便所带来的“种子雨”，这对于重新殖民被砍伐殆尽的雨林至关重要。

Along with changing the eating habits of bats, light can have direct physiological effects, another study found.

另一项研究发现，除了改变蝙蝠的饮食习惯之外，光还可以产生直接的生理效应。

Juvenile bats that hailed from illuminated buildings were smaller – their wings were shorter and they weighed less – than those born to the dark.

从被照亮的建筑物中诞生的幼年蝙蝠比在黑暗中出生的蝙蝠更小，它们的翅膀更短，重量也更轻。

For pelagic ocean animals, who live in the liminal space between the surface and the sea floor, the light of the moon and the sun are the only landmarks.

对于生活在海面和海底之间的界限空间的远洋海洋动物来说，月光和太阳的光是唯一的地标。

Dazzling boats in coastal waters – another luminous activity visible from space – lure fish to the surface and into nets, but also interfere with marine organisms’ navigation, hunting and mating habits.

沿海水域中令人眼花缭乱的船只——另一种从太空可见的发光活动——将鱼类引诱到水面并入网，但也干扰了海洋生物的航行、狩猎和交配习惯。

Including moths to a flame, nocturnal invertebrates are the most well-recognised examples of creatures disoriented by light.

包括飞蛾扑火在内，夜行性无脊椎动物是最广为人知的因光而迷失方向的生物例子。

Insects congregate around light sources until they die of exhaustion (or, caught in the spotlight, are eaten by birds and bats).

昆虫聚集在光源周围，直到精疲力竭而死（或者，在聚光灯下被鸟类和蝙蝠吃掉）。

In a 2012 study, the Exeter scientist Jonathan Bennie found that light pollution changed the composition of ecological communities among five major invertebrate groups.

在 2012 年的一项研究中，埃克塞特大学科学家乔纳森·本尼发现，光污染改变了五个主要无脊椎动物群体的生态群落组成。

‘Street lighting changes the environment at higher levels of biological organisation than previously recognised,’ Bennie and his co-authors wrote, ‘raising the potential that it can alter the structure and function of ecosystems.’

本尼和他的合著者写道：“街道照明比以前认识到的更高水平的生物组织改变了环境，提高了它改变生态系统结构和功能的潜力。”

This is true for diurnal creatures, too.

对于昼行生物来说也是如此。

Animals that make their living during the day are still disrupted by artificial night-time light.

白天谋生的动物仍然受到夜间人造光的干扰。

Occasionally, artificial light can be beneficial by extending the hours of day – in a 2012 study, the biologist Ross Dwyer and his colleagues at the University of Exeter found a waterbird called the common redshank foraged longer and more effectively at night along an industrialised Scottish estuary.

有时，人造光可以通过延长白天的时间来发挥作用——在 2012 年的一项研究中，埃克塞特大学的生物学家罗斯·德怀尔 (Ross Dwyer) 和他的同事发现，一种名为普通红脚鹬的水鸟在夜间沿着工业化的苏格兰河口觅食的时间更长、效率更高。

But as with the insects, this carries consequences for the broader ecosystem.

但与昆虫一样，这会对更广泛的生态系统产生影响。

On land, artificial lighting causes a cascade of negative physiological changes in diurnal creatures, many brought about by delayed release of the hormone melatonin.

在陆地上，人工照明会给昼间生物带来一系列负面的生理变化，其中许多是由褪黑激素的延迟释放引起的。

Davide Dominoni and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Germany found it was suppressed in European blackbirds exposed to just 0.3 lux at night.

德国马克斯普朗克研究所的戴维德·多米诺尼 (Davide Dominoni) 和他的同事发现，欧洲黑鹂在夜间暴露于仅 0.3 勒克斯的光照下，这种现象就会受到抑制。

These birds developed their reproductive systems a month earlier, and moulted earlier, than birds kept in the dark.

这些鸟比在黑暗中饲养的鸟早一个月发育出生殖系统，换毛也更早。

A different study, by Travis Longcore of the Urban Wildlands Group in Los Angeles, found that blue tits under the influence of streetlamps laid their eggs earlier than those experiencing dark nights.

洛杉矶城市荒地小组的特拉维斯·朗科尔进行的另一项研究发现，在路灯影响下的蓝山雀比经历黑夜的蓝山雀产卵更早。

And in mammals, from mice to men, the effects of melatonin suppression might be far worse.

而在哺乳动物中，从老鼠到人类，褪黑激素抑制的影响可能要严重得多。

The National Sleep Foundation says that more than 90 per cent of Americans regularly use some type of electronic device in the hour before bed.

美国国家睡眠基金会表示，超过 90% 的美国人经常在睡前一小时使用某种类型的电子设备。

Photo by Rex Features

雷克斯摄 特色

A growing body of evidence shows that light pollution exacerbates, and might directly cause, cancer, obesity, and depression, the troublesome triumvirate of industrialised society.

越来越多的证据表明，光污染会加剧并可能直接导致癌症、肥胖和抑郁症，这是工业化社会的三大麻烦。

One of the first people to notice this correlation, at least as it applies to cancer, is Richard Stevens, a professor at the University of Connecticut, respected cancer epidemiologist, and mild insomniac.

最先注意到这种相关性（至少在癌症方面如此）的人之一是康涅狄格大学教授理查德·史蒂文斯（Richard Stevens），他是一位受人尊敬的癌症流行病学家，也是一名轻度失眠症患者。

In the early 1980s, Stevens and other researchers were beginning to realise there was little or no connection between diet and rising rates of breast cancer, contrary to what had been suspected.

20 世纪 80 年代初，史蒂文斯和其他研究人员开始意识到饮食与乳腺癌发病率上升之间几乎没有联系，这与之前的怀疑相反。

As Stevens puts it, it was like a light bulb going on when he realised that, in fact, a light bulb going on might be a culprit.

正如史蒂文斯所说，当他意识到实际上亮起的灯泡可能是罪魁祸首时，就像一个灯泡亮了一样。

‘I really did wake up in the middle of the night in my apartment in Washington state, and realise I could read a newspaper by the light from a street light.

“我确实在半夜在华盛顿州的公寓里醒来，意识到我可以通过路灯的灯光阅读报纸。

And I wondered, what’s that?’ he told me.

我想知道那是什么？”他告诉我。

‘So I started calling around.

“所以我开始到处打电话。

I started to learn about circadian rhythmicity.

我开始了解昼夜节律。

And about this hormone called melatonin.’ His 1987 paper ‘Electric Power Use and Breast Cancer: A Hypothesis’ was one of the first to report the potential connection between rising cancer rates and artificial night-time light exposure, something he and others have continued to report in the intervening 27 years.

还有一种叫做褪黑激素的激素。”他 1987 年发表的论文《电力使用与乳腺癌：一种假设》是最早报道癌症发病率上升与夜间人造光照射之间潜在联系的论文之一，他和其他人在接下来的 27 年里不断报道这一点。

Melatonin is produced in the pineal gland, a small pine-cone-shaped knob in the centre of the vertebrate brain.

褪黑激素是在松果体中产生的，松果体是脊椎动物大脑中心的一个松果状的小旋钮。

It is derived from serotonin, a neurotransmitter that is involved in mood and appetite.

它源自血清素，一种与情绪和食欲有关的神经递质。

And melatonin is an antioxidant, which protects DNA from damage; this has important implications for cancer biology.

褪黑激素是一种抗氧化剂，可以保护 DNA 免受损伤；这对癌症生物学具有重要意义。

Stevens has published research demonstrating melatonin can prevent breast tumours in rats.

史蒂文斯发表的研究表明褪黑激素可以预防大鼠的乳腺肿瘤。

But the hormone’s chief role is in regulating the daily sleep-wake cycle by causing drowsiness and lowering core body temperature.

但这种激素的主要作用是通过引起困倦和降低核心体温来调节日常睡眠-觉醒周期。

Melatonin has the same basic function in people, birds, fish, amphibians, and other mammals.

褪黑激素在人、鸟类、鱼类、两栖动物和其他哺乳动物中具有相同的基本功能。

Production of melatonin should begin at dusk, when we are supposed to sleep.

褪黑激素的产生应该在黄昏时开始，此时我们应该睡觉。

Light – not wakefulness itself, but light – shuts it off, as Stevens emphasised to me.

正如史蒂文斯向我强调的那样，光——不是觉醒本身，而是光——会关闭它。

A remarkably recent discovery helps explain what’s going on.

最近的一项惊人发现有助于解释正在发生的事情。

In 2000, scientists noticed a light-capturing pigment, which they called melanopsin, in the retina.

2000 年，科学家们在视网膜中发现了一种捕获光的色素，他们将其称为黑视素。

It’s a different pigment from the types in our cone- and rod-shaped photoreceptors, which helped me see the monochrome landscape of the midnight Atacama.

它是一种与我们的锥状和棒状感光器中的色素不同的色素，它帮助我看到了午夜阿塔卡马的单色景观。

In 2002, the biologists David Berson of Brown University and Samer Hattar of Johns Hopkins University rediscovered a special type of cell that uses this pigment (they were first described, but then forgotten, in 1923).

2002 年，布朗大学的生物学家 David Berson 和约翰霍普金斯大学的 Samer Hattar 重新发现了一种使用这种色素的特殊细胞（它们于 1923 年首次被描述，但随后被遗忘）。

They were dubbed ‘intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells’ – simply put, they have nothing to do with vision, but they sense light, whose presence they communicate directly to the brain.

它们被称为“本质上感光的视网膜神经节细胞”——简单地说，它们与视觉无关，但它们能感知光，并将光的存在直接传达给大脑。

Blue light, to be specific.

具体来说，是蓝光。

By studying the eyes of primitive creatures such as lampreys and hagfish, scientists can tell that these special cells have been present in the vertebrate retina for at least 500 million years.

通过研究七鳃鳗和盲鳗等原始生物的眼睛，科学家们可以得知，这些特殊的细胞在脊椎动物视网膜中已经存在了至少5亿年。

This means that since the dawn of backboned animals, all such creatures have been equipped to track the day and night, and calibrate their metabolic cycles accordingly.

这意味着自从有脊椎动物诞生以来，所有这些生物都具备了追踪昼夜的能力，并相应地校准它们的新陈代谢周期。

The light-exposed rodents got fat, even though they were eating the same number of calories as their dark-sequestered mates

暴露在光下的啮齿动物会变胖，尽管它们摄入的热量与暴露在黑暗中的同伴相同。

When you think about the fact that humans figured out fire 250,000 years ago and electricity just 130 years ago, the importance of light to our brains and biology starts to become clearer.

想想人类在 25 万年前发明了火，在 130 年前发明了电，光对我们的大脑和生物学的重要性就开始变得更加清晰。

As Stevens puts it, circadian biology is at the core of all biology, human biology included.

正如史蒂文斯所说，昼夜节律生物学是所有生物学的核心，包括人类生物学。

Randy Nelson, a circadian biologist at Ohio State University, has been studying light’s effects on depression and obesity since 2004, when one of his graduate students was hospitalised for a staph infection.

俄亥俄州立大学昼夜节律生物学家兰迪·尼尔森 (Randy Nelson) 自 2004 年以来一直在研究光对抑郁和肥胖的影响，当时他的一名研究生因葡萄球菌感染住院。

The student complained bitterly about the bright lights in his room and in the hospital hallway, which robbed him of sleep and stressed him out.

该学生痛苦地抱怨他的房间和医院走廊里的明亮灯光，这剥夺了他的睡眠并给他带来了压力。

Nelson and another graduate student, Laura Fonken, decided to investigate this complaint using rodents as experimental subjects.

尼尔森和另一名研究生劳拉·丰肯决定使用啮齿类动物作为实验对象来调查这一投诉。

They found that mice who were exposed to constant bright light exhibited depressive symptoms, behaving listlessly and ignoring their sugar-water treats.

他们发现，暴露在持续强光下的老鼠表现出抑郁症状，表现出无精打采并且忽视糖水。

Remarkably, they then found that the same happened when the mice were exposed to only 5 lux at night, when the animals were normally active.

值得注意的是，他们随后发现，当小鼠在夜间（当动物通常活跃时）仅暴露在 5 勒克斯的光照下时，也会发生同样的情况。

This is equivalent, Fonken notes, to leaving a television on in your bedroom, or a computer screen next to your head as you nod off.

丰肯指出，这相当于在你的卧室里开着电视，或者在你打瞌睡时把电脑屏幕放在你的头旁边。

Later, the team worked with diurnal Nile grass rats instead of nocturnal mice, and found the same thing.

后来，研究小组用白天活动的尼罗河草鼠而不是夜间活动的老鼠进行了研究，并发现了同样的结果。

The rats exhibited not only depression, but demonstrable changes in neuronal connectivity in the hippocampus, the part of the brain involved in learning, memory and affective responses.

老鼠不仅表现出抑郁症，而且海马体神经元连接也发生了明显的变化，海马体是大脑中涉及学习、记忆和情感反应的部分。

Along the way, Fonken also noticed something unexpected: the light-exposed rodents got fat, even though they were eating the same number of calories as their dark-sequestered mates.

在此过程中，冯肯还注意到一些意想不到的事情：暴露在阳光下的啮齿动物会变胖，尽管它们摄入的热量与暴露在黑暗中的同伴相同。

What changed was their circadian rhythms; like a snacky night owl, they were eating when they should have been inactive, upending their digestive and metabolic activity.

改变的是他们的昼夜节律。就像爱吃零食的夜猫子一样，他们在本应不活动的时候吃东西，从而扰乱了他们的消化和代谢活动。

One side effect of inbreeding lab mice is that some of them do not produce melatonin, Fonken told me, which means something else might have been interrupting their internal timepieces.

冯肯告诉我，近亲繁殖实验室小鼠的一个副作用是，其中一些小鼠不产生褪黑激素，这意味着其他东西可能会干扰它们的内部计时器。

Fonken looked at gene expression and noticed changes in a gene known helpfully as CLOCK (Circadian Locomotor Output Cycles Kaput), among others.

Fonken 研究了基因表达，并注意到一个被称为 CLOCK（昼夜节律运动输出周期 Kaput）等基因的变化。

Messenger RNA molecules were activated by light, switching multiple genes on or off to regulate circadian rhythms.

信使 RNA 分子被光激活，打开或关闭多个基因以调节昼夜节律。

Fonken guards against drawing too many human conclusions from these rodent studies, but epidemiological evidence suggests the implications for people could be profound.

丰肯避免从这些啮齿动物研究中得出太多人类结论，但流行病学证据表明，这对人类的影响可能是深远的。

‘R ather than falling, night, to the watchful eye, rises,’ writes Ekirch in At Day ’ s Close .

埃基奇在《黎明时分》中写道：“在警惕的目光中，夜幕不但没有落下，反而升起。”

Shadows creep up lows and valleys first, then consume hillsides and houses and the tallest buildings.

阴影首先爬上低地和山谷，然后吞噬山坡、房屋和最高的建筑物。

Muted greys and deeper blues chase off the sun until finally the sky leaks no colour.

柔和的灰色和更深的蓝色驱赶阳光，直到最后天空不再漏出任何颜色。

When we sleep according to a solar cycle, melatonin production follows this pattern, rising with the night.

当我们按照太阳周期睡眠时，褪黑激素的产生遵循这种模式，随着夜晚的增加而增加。

But artificial light tamps it down.

但人造光会削弱它。

This is frustratingly apparent for a special class of humans who experience sunsets every 90 minutes: astronauts.

对于每 90 分钟就会经历一次日落的特殊人群：宇航员来说，这一点令人沮丧地明显。

One of the most frequent complaints of orbital crew members is insomnia; they pop sleeping pills on a regular basis, and still get only about six hours of shuteye, though they’re allotted eight.

轨道宇航员最常见的抱怨之一就是失眠。他们定期服用安眠药，尽管被分配了八个小时的睡眠时间，但仍然只能睡六个小时左右。

Steven W Lockley, a Harvard neuroscientist, recommends altering the light to improve matters.

哈佛大学神经科学家史蒂文·W·洛克利 (Steven W Lockley) 建议通过改变光线来改善情况。

In 2012, he advised NASA engineers to change the light bulbs on the International Space Station to a type of LED that can display blueshifted light during the ‘day’, when the crew is working, and red-shifted light when they need to rest.

2012 年，他建议 NASA 工程师将国际空间站上的灯泡更换为一种 LED，可以在“白天”宇航员工作时显示蓝移光，而在他们需要休息时显示红移光。

Why the difference?

为什么有区别？

That crucial ganglion, the circadian photoreceptor, is particularly sensitive to light toward the bluish end of the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet visible-light spectrum.

这个关键的神经节，即昼夜节律感光器，对红色、橙色、黄色、绿色、蓝色、靛蓝和紫色可见光谱的蓝色端的光特别敏感。

Blue light also pours from the phone, tablet or computer screen on which you’re reading this.

您正在阅读本文的手机、平板电脑或电脑屏幕也会发出蓝光。

This light, in a wavelength very similar to daylight, has been shown to exacerbate insomnia in scores of studies.

这种光的波长与日光非常相似，大量研究表明它会加剧失眠。

In 2007, Belgian researchers surveyed 1,656 teenagers about their use of mobile phones after lights-out, and found those who used a phone less than once per week were more than twice as likely to be ‘very tired’ a year later as those who never did.

2007年，比利时研究人员调查了1656名青少年熄灯后使用手机的情况，发现每周使用手机次数少于一次的青少年一年后感到“非常疲倦”的可能性是那些从不使用手机的青少年的两倍多。

Using a phone after lights-out about once a week increased the risk of being ‘very tired’ by five times.

每周大约一次熄灯后使用手机会使“非常疲劳”的风险增加五倍。

In 2012, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute showed that two hours of exposure to a bright tablet screen at night, like an iPad or a Kindle, reduced melatonin levels by 22 per cent.

2012 年，伦斯勒理工学院的研究人员发现，晚上在明亮的平板电脑屏幕（如 iPad 或 Kindle）面前暴露两个小时，褪黑激素水平会降低 22%。

And the National Sleep Foundation says that more than 90 per cent of Americans regularly use some type of electronic device in the hour before bed.

美国国家睡眠基金会表示，超过 90% 的美国人经常在睡前一小时使用某种类型的电子设备。

There is a great difference between natural night waking and electronic-induced insomnia, Stevens points out.

史蒂文斯指出，自然夜间醒来和电子引起的失眠之间存在很大差异。

In his history of the night, Ekirch explains that temporary night-time waking – of the type that used to plague Stevens – is hardly unnatural.

埃基奇在他的夜间历史中解释说，夜间短暂的醒来——过去困扰史蒂文斯的类型——并不是不自然的。

Humans have aroused in the middle of the night since time immemorial to pee, snack, chat with relatives and neighbours, make love, and simply enjoy ‘quiet wakefulness’.

自古以来，人类都会在半夜醒来撒尿、吃零食、与亲戚和邻居聊天、做爱，只是享受“安静的清醒”。

‘There is every reason to believe that segmented sleep, such as many wild animals exhibit, had long been the natural pattern of our slumber before the modern age, with a provenance as old as humankind,’ Ekirch writes.

埃基奇写道：“我们有充分的理由相信，分段睡眠，就像许多野生动物所表现出的那样，长期以来一直是我们睡眠的自然模式，其起源与人类一样古老。”

The unnatural part is that, now, we get up and we turn on the light, silencing melatonin.

不自然的是，现在我们起床，打开灯，褪黑激素就停止了。

Insomnia is hardly the worst side effect of light pollution.

失眠并不是光污染最严重的副作用。

Shift workers, who rise with the night and work awash in blue light, experience not only disrupted circadian rhythms and sleep deprivation, but an increased risk of breast and prostate cancer.

轮班工人在夜间起床并在蓝光中工作，他们不仅会经历昼夜节律紊乱和睡眠不足，而且患乳腺癌和前列腺癌的风险也会增加。

These cancers, which require hormones to grow, are suppressed in the presence of melatonin, Stevens has shown.

史蒂文斯证明，这些需要激素才能生长的癌症在褪黑激素的存在下会受到抑制。

In 2010, Stevens published a review of breast cancer sensitivity in 164 countries, and found a 30 to 50 per cent increased risk of cancer in nations with the worst light pollution, but no increased prevalence of non-hormonally dependent cancers in the same populations.

2010年，史蒂文斯发表了一份关于164个国家乳腺癌敏感性的综述，发现光污染最严重的国家患癌症的风险增加了30%至50%，但在相同人群中非激素依赖性癌症的患病率并未增加。

‘Our use of electric light in the modern world is disrupting our circadian sleep and our biology.

“现代世界对电灯的使用正在扰乱我们的昼夜节律睡眠和生物学。

There is no question about that.

毫无疑问。

Does that have physiological consequences?

这会产生生理后果吗？

There is more and more evidence that it does,’ Stevens told me.

越来越多的证据表明确实如此，”史蒂文斯告诉我。

‘The epidemiological studies are the crudest, but the most important.’

“流行病学研究是最粗略的，但却是最重要的。”

I am a night-time chronotype and I drink electricity as thirstily as anyone

我是夜间睡眠型，我和其他人一样渴喝电

As we discussed a litany of light-related problems, I asked Stevens: ‘Is it a legitimate question to ask if light is the major factor in depression, obesity, and cancer?

当我们讨论一连串与光相关的问题时，我问史蒂文斯：“光是否是抑郁、肥胖和癌症的主要因素，这是一个合理的问题吗？”

Is there potential for light to be the reason behind all of those things?’

光有可能成为所有这些事物背后的原因吗？

The day is coming when doctors might feel confident saying so, he added, just as they now say that smoking causes lung cancer.

他补充说，有一天，医生可能会自信地说出这一点，就像他们现在说吸烟会导致肺癌一样。

The murky part is what to do about it.

模糊的部分是如何处理它。

A torrent of light is what you might call a ‘First World problem’.

一股光流就是你所说的“第一世界问题”。

Even as Western cities try to bring back starlit nights, students throughout developing countries in southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa still read by candlelight.

即使西方城市试图恢复星光灿烂的夜晚，东南亚和撒哈拉以南非洲发展中国家的学生仍然在烛光下读书。

Economically depressed regions tend to be darker; after the collapse of communism, satellite imagery showed several countries in the former Soviet Union were dimmer at night.

经济萧条的地区往往颜色较暗；共产主义垮台后，卫星图像显示前苏联的几个国家的夜晚变得更加昏暗。

When we, in the industrialised world, do manage to turn off the lights, there are measurable, beneficial effects on our circadian rhythms.

当我们生活在工业化世界时，设法关掉灯，就会对我们的昼夜节律产生可测量的有益影响。

In a widely reported paper last summer, Kenneth Wright at the University of Colorado at Boulder took eight students camping in the Rocky Mountains for two weeks.

去年夏天，在一篇被广泛报道的论文中，科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的肯尼思·赖特 (Kenneth Wright) 带领八名学生在落基山脉露营了两周。

They weren’t allowed to use any artificial light after the sun went down – only the sanguine glow of campfire.

太阳下​​山后，他们不被允许使用任何人造光——只能使用营火的乐观光芒。

After a week, melatonin started to rise at sunset, peak in the middle of the night, and taper just at sunrise, which Wright called a ‘remarkable’ result.

一周后，褪黑激素在日落时开始上升，在半夜达到峰值，并在日出时逐渐减少，赖特称这是一个“了不起的”结果。

‘Internal biological time under natural light-dark conditions tightly synchronises to environmental time, and in this regard, humans are comparable to other animals,’ he wrote.

他写道：“自然光暗条件下的内部生物时间与环境时间紧密同步，在这方面，人类与其他动物具有可比性。”

Of course, very few of us are going to camp outside nightly, or stop working at 4:30pm in winter, let alone shut down power plants and global commerce.

当然，我们很少有人会每晚在外面露营，或者在冬天下午 4:30 停止工作，更不用说关闭发电厂和全球商业了。

And even as I mourn the loss of night, I am no Luddite myself.

即使我哀悼黑夜的消失，我自己也不是勒德分子。

I read Wright’s study and so many others while sitting in bed, hours after the sun had set, bathed in the bluish spectrum of light emitted by my iPad.

太阳落山后几个小时，我坐在床上，沐浴在 iPad 发出的蓝色光谱中，阅读了赖特的研究和许多其他研究。

I am a night-time chronotype and I drink electricity as thirstily as anyone.

我是夜间睡眠型，我和其他人一样渴喝电。

As NASA has found, redshifted lamps, rather than a blue hue, are a better choice for bedside reading.

正如美国宇航局发现的那样，红移灯而不是蓝色调的灯是床边阅读的更好选择。

Chronobiologists are concerned about the fluorescent swirls that will comprise the majority of American light fixtures when the ban on incandescent bulbs finally sets in.

时间生物学家担心，当白炽灯泡禁令最终实施时，美国大部分灯具中都会出现荧光漩涡。

They emit too much blue light – we should use red-shifted LEDs instead.

它们发出太多蓝光——我们应该使用红移 LED 来代替。

The same goes for many building lights and streetlamps.

许多建筑灯和路灯也是如此。

Along with keeping us more awake, this light is especially intrusive for the same reason the sky is blue: it scatters more readily, causing even more light pollution.

除了让我们更加清醒之外，这种光还特别具有侵入性，原因与天空是蓝色的相同：它更容易散射，造成更多的光污染。

Downward-directed streetlamps can illuminate larger areas while casting fewer shadows and errant upward glow.

向下的路灯可以照亮更大的区域，同时投射更少的阴影和错误的向上发光。

Smarter, more efficient use can cut wasted light, wasted money and wasted energy.

更智能、更高效的使用可以减少光浪费、金钱浪费和能源浪费。

This has been a powerful factor in bringing back the night in towns from Brainerd, Minnesota, to Paris – the City of Light.

这是让从明尼苏达州布雷纳德到“光之城”巴黎等城镇恢复夜晚的强大因素。

Since July 2013, the French capital has been going dark for several hours at night to save money and ‘reduce the print of artificial lighting on the nocturnal environment’, in the words of its Environment Ministry.

自 2013 年 7 月以来，法国首都一直在夜间昏暗几个小时，以节省开支并“减少人工照明对夜间环境的影响”，用法国环境部的话说。

In a paper published this January, Exeter’s Jonathan Bennie and colleagues reported that some economically developed regions, especially throughout Europe, are trending darker.

在今年一月发表的一篇论文中，埃克塞特大学的乔纳森·本尼（Jonathan Bennie）及其同事报告说，一些经济发达地区，尤其是整个欧洲，正在变得更加黑暗。

For those of us addicted to our glowing phones and tablets, an app called F.lux can help.

对于我们这些沉迷于发光手机和平板电脑的人来说，一款名为 F.lux 的应用程序可以提供帮助。

It ‘warms’ your device’s display screen so that it shifts red in the evening, more closely matching incandescent bulbs and the hue of the setting sun.

它会“温暖”您设备的显示屏，使其在晚上变成红色，更接近白炽灯泡和落日的色调。

Just a brief glimpse at your mobile phone at bedtime is enough to expose your retinas to artificial light, so fighting such a comprehensive intrusion might be an exercise in futility.

只要在睡前看一眼手机就足以让你的视网膜暴露在人造光下，因此对抗如此全面的入侵可能是徒劳的。

But even if we can’t completely quench our thirst for light, we can all make one small gesture, which could prompt us to unplug a little more.

但即使我们不能完全满足对光明的渴望，我们都可以做出一个小举动，这可能会促使我们多拔掉一点电源。

I try to do this whenever the sky above St Louis is clear.

每当圣路易斯上方的天空晴朗时，我都会尝试这样做。

After I climb out of my car but before I open the fence gate and the hinge cheeps, before I step onto the deck and the wood sags and the motion-sensor light turns on, I stop, and I look up.

在我爬下车后，在我打开栅栏门、铰链发出吱吱声之前，在我走上甲板、木头下垂、运动传感器灯亮起之前，我停下来，抬起头来。

I nod at Jupiter, blazing in the east.

我向在东方燃烧的木星点点头。

I greet Orion in his more familiar, northern form.

我以更熟悉的北方形态迎接猎户座。

I squint at the moon if it is there and I let my eyes open wide, hoping more stars will leak through the city haze and reach me standing there, in the darkness.

我眯着眼睛看着月亮（如果有的话），然后睁大眼睛，希望有更多的星星穿过城市的阴霾，到达站在黑暗中的我。

This was a wonderful article, very interesting and informative.

这是一篇精彩的文章，非常有趣且内容丰富。

Growing up in Chicago, I was quite aware of the way nighttime lighting kept the urban environment 'in your face.' Then when I moved out to the Iowa countryside, farmstead after farmstead had bright yard-lights that came on with the first hint of dusk.

我在芝加哥长大，非常清楚夜间照明如何让城市环境“在你眼前”。然后，当我搬到爱荷华州的乡村时，一个又一个的农庄都有明亮的院子灯，随着黄昏的第一缕曙光而亮起。

Farmers like these lights for convenience and security, I suppose; but for me, with each nightfall they just tear ragged holes in the horizon.

我想，农民喜欢这些灯是为了方便和安全；但对我来说，每一个夜幕降临，它们都会在地平线上撕开破烂的洞。

When we moved to the country from the city 25 years ago, we were looking forward to it being dark that first night, and then the "security light" blinded us.

25年前，当我们从城市搬到乡村时，我们期待着第一个晚上天黑了，然后“安全灯”让我们睁不开眼。

We decided to get rid of it, which was quite difficult!

我们决定摆脱它，这非常困难！

There were papers to sign and the electricians clearly questioned our sanity.

有文件需要签署，电工显然质疑我们的理智。

We feel much safer without it.

没有它我们会感觉更安全。

There is no light that advertises our place.

没有灯光来宣传我们的地方。

There are no shadows for someone to hide in.

没有人可以躲藏的阴影。

Our eyes adjust to darkness nicely, if we want to be outside; or flashlights are always an option.

如果我们想去户外，我们的眼睛就能很好地适应黑暗。或手电筒始终是一种选择。

We got rid of our yard light too.

我们也去掉了院子里的灯。

At first we wired it with an on/off switch; but then about twenty years ago we removed the light and the pole.

首先，我们给它连接了一个开/关开关；但大约二十年前，我们拆除了灯和杆子。

I agree with your comments about eyes adjusting nicely to the darkness, and the feeling of greater rather than less security.

我同意你关于眼睛能很好地适应黑暗的评论，以及更大而不是更少安全感的感觉。

But I'm not a farmer.

但我不是农民。

If I had the large investments in agricultural equipment found on the typical Iowa farm these days, I suppose I'd feel differently.

如果我对当今爱荷华州典型农场的农业设备进行大量投资，我想我会有不同的感觉。

I love astronomy and happen to own land in my home state of New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo mountains.

我热爱天文学，并且碰巧在我的家乡新墨西哥州的桑格雷德克里斯托山脉拥有土地。

The night sky is bliss.

夜空是幸福的。

I love going home, and staring into that night sky laying on the ground.

我喜欢回家，躺在地上凝视夜空。

It feels like your attached to side of a giant ball with eternity stretching in every direction.

感觉就像你附着在一个巨大的球的一侧，永恒地向各个方向延伸。

A 1997 report from the US National Institute of Justice found no conclusive correlation between night-time lighting and crime rates.

美国国家司法研究所 1997 年的一份报告发现，夜间照明与犯罪率之间没有确实的相关性。

My 1973 study also DOJ found quite specific measurable crime reduction at night following upgraded street lighting in Kansas City Missouri

我 1973 年的研究还发现，司法部发现，在密苏里州堪萨斯城升级街道照明后，夜间犯罪明显减少

James Q Wilson singled it out for praise, as most studies of this sort were doomed methodologically - -

詹姆斯·Q·威尔逊（James Q Wilson）特别赞扬了它，因为大多数此类研究在方法论上都注定失败——

biphasic sleep is under appreciated (legitimized) (segmented sleep)

双相睡眠未被重视（合法化）（分段睡眠）

if there is something to red-shift and blue-shift, this would be good to know

如果有什么东西可以红移和蓝移，这会很高兴知道

night shift workers provide a natural experiment, i was one for a while, 1963-1964

夜班工人提供了一个自然的实验，我曾经做过一段时间，1963-1964

There is another effect of light pollution that has not yet been reported in the literature.

光污染还有一个尚未在文献中报道过的影响。

The traditional religions of humanity located their deities on the land, at sea, and particularly in the sky.

人类的传统宗教将他们的神灵安置在陆地、海上，尤其是天空。

The entire history of the Abrahamic religions is one of sky-gods.

亚伯拉罕宗教的整个历史都是天神的历史之一。

As the New Atheists are fond of putting it, with deliberate scorn, the Abrahamic religions are 'sky-god religions.'

正如新无神论者喜欢带着故意蔑视的说法，亚伯拉罕宗教是“天神宗教”。

When you look up into the natural night sky, what you see is a carpet of stars and distant galaxies too numerous to even begin to count.

当你仰望自然的夜空时，你看到的是一片星星和遥远的星系，数量多得难以计数。

The natural response to that is one of awe and wonder.

对此的自然反应是敬畏和惊奇。

And where awe and wonder combine with personalisation, the result is the deeply-felt sense that there is 'someone above.' For the traditionally religious, the mere fact of looking up into the unimpeded night sky reinforces their faith with feeling.

当敬畏和惊奇与个性化相结合时，就会产生一种深深的感觉，即“有人在上面”。对于传统的宗教人士来说，仅仅仰望畅通无阻的夜空就可以用情感强化他们的信仰。

In a light-polluted world, looking up into the sky meets with a hazy photon-fog.

在光污染的世界里，仰望天空会遇到朦胧的光子雾。

Gone are the darkness, the depth, and the vast quantity of objects sparkling overhead.

黑暗、深度和头顶上大量闪闪发光的物体都消失了。

Gone is the awe and the wonder, and the basis for feeling a deep sense that there is 'someone above.'

敬畏和惊奇，以及感受到“有人在上面”的深刻感觉的基础都消失了。

Instead we spend more and more of our time plugged into computers.

相反，我们将越来越多的时间花在电脑上。

As we do, we bring to them some of the emotions displaced from other areas of life that once held more of our attention, including the emotions that make for religious worship.

当我们这样做时，我们给他们带来了一些从生活其他领域取代的情感，这些情感曾经引起我们更多的关注，包括宗教崇拜的情感。

Thusly have arisen the new Computer God religions: the Temple of Alcor (freeze your corpse until nanotech can rebuild it as a godlike immortal), the Church of Singularity (upload, which is to say, reincarnate your mind into a machine, thereby also achieving godlike immortality), and the Cult of Google (more AI worship, tinged with yearning for a new Borg).

于是，新的计算机神宗教诞生了：阿尔科神殿（冻结你的尸体，直到纳米技术可以将其重建为神一般的不朽）、奇点教会（上传，也就是说，将你的思想转世为一台机器，从而也实现神一般的不朽）和谷歌崇拜（更多的人工智能崇拜，带有对新博格的渴望）。

I'll predict that this trend will continue, and will only accelerate as computers get better and better at simulating human minds.

我预测这种趋势将会持续下去，并且只会随着计算机在模拟人类思维方面变得越来越好而加速。

Even now, per another current article on Aeon, we are contemplating turning over our most basic ethical and moral decisions to algorithms running on silicon platforms.

即使是现在，根据 Aeon 上的另一篇最新文章，我们仍在考虑将最基本的伦理和道德决策交给在硅平台上运行的算法。

Even worse, there are entire subcultures who would do so with the same eagerness that they show for the latest consumer baubles.

更糟糕的是，有一些亚文化群体会像对最新的消费小玩意一样热衷于这样做。

I'll also predict that if there is ever a cyberattack on the power grid or some other circumstance such as chronic energy shortage, that forces a lengthy period during which nights are once again dark, we will see a decrease of popularity of Computer God religions, and an increase of newly-arising Sky God religions.

我还会预测，如果电网遭受网络攻击或其他一些情况，例如长期能源短缺，迫使夜晚再次黑暗的漫长时期，我们将看到电脑神宗教的受欢迎程度下降，而新出现的天神宗教的增加。

"As the New Atheists are fond of putting it, with deliberate scorn, the Abrahamic religions are 'sky-god religions.'"

“正如新无神论者故意轻蔑地喜欢说的那样，亚伯拉罕宗教是‘天神宗教’。”

I'd say "Old" Atheists said the same, as the idea is pretty evident from the Bible itself.

我想说“老”无神论者也这么说，因为这个想法从圣经本身就很明显。

There is a good chance by the way that Yahweh started out as Vulcanic earth god, or at least one aspect that later became Yahweh did, see all the stuff regarding Moses and the holy mountain God dwelled in which God could blast if anyone dared to touch it.

很有可能，耶和华一开始是火神大地神，或者至少后来成为耶和华的一个方面，看到了所有关于摩西和上帝居住的圣山的东西，如果有人胆敢触摸它，上帝就会爆炸。

However, sky gods were often mostly weather gods, so it isn't so much light pollution that would "kill" them, as their main function was of course keeping the weather calm, between sunny and rainy, and all the stars was only a secondary function, usually even not really something of the sky god, but explained otherwise (Christian firmament, Greek and Roman god symbols, ancestors etc.)

然而，天空之神往往大多是天气之神，所以并不是光污染会“杀死”他们，因为它们的主要功能当然是保持天气平静，晴雨之间，所有的星星只是次要功能，通常甚至不是真正的天空之神，但另有解释（基督教的苍穹，希腊和罗马的神符号，祖先等）

Bright light in the morning, darkness (or blue blockers) at night.

早晨明亮的光线，晚上黑暗（或蓝色阻挡物）。

Done and done.

完成了，完成了。

Great article.

很棒的文章。

As an occasional insomniac I have found that lowering light levels and especially blue light has helped my sleep greatly.

作为一个偶尔失眠的人，我发现降低光线水平，尤其是蓝光对我的睡眠有很大帮助。

Unfortunately, one of the worst sources of light-pollution are the new HID and LED headlights, the most intense, blue-spectrum light any of us are exposed to, and of course at the wrong time, night.

不幸的是，最严重的光污染源之一是新型 HID 和 LED 车头灯，这是我们任何人接触到的最强烈的蓝色光谱光，当然是在错误的时间，晚上。

I have started a MoveOn.org petition for this issue.

我已就此问题向 MoveOn.org 发起请愿。

It can be found at

可以在以下位置找到：

I have a daylight simulator lamp that mimics the sun during the day.

我有一个日光模拟器灯，可以模仿白天的太阳。

I use it in the morning and it has a blue light then changes mid-day to a yellow color, and then to a warm orange color when the sun goes down.

我在早上使用它，它发出蓝光，然后在中午变成黄色，然后在太阳落山时变成温暖的橙色。

It has really helped me sleep, and function better throughout the day.

它确实帮助我睡眠，并且一整天都能更好地工作。

Great article, Rebecca!

很棒的文章，丽贝卡！

Thank you.

谢谢。

Sadly, current strategies used by the mainstream light pollution orgs won't restore starry nights.

可悲的是，主流光污染组织目前使用的策略无法恢复繁星点点的夜晚。

We must create new ways to restore starlight, not with more technology, but by eliminating lights that desecrate nights.

我们必须创造新的方法来恢复星光，不是通过更多的技术，而是通过消除亵渎夜晚的灯光。

We can do this or, well, lose the universe.

我们可以做到这一点，或者，好吧，失去宇宙。

Certainly not my choice.

当然不是我的选择。

Several years ago I created an org devoted to eliminating lights that desecrate nights called the darkskyinitiative.org You are welcome to be a part of the effort.

几年前，我创建了一个名为 darkskyinitiative.org 的组织，致力于消除亵渎夜晚的灯光，欢迎您参与其中。

Stargeezer Jack, aka Dark Sky Guy, Dark Sky Knight.

Stargeezer Jack，又名暗空侠、暗空骑士。

I am always amused by titles like that which act like out in the country everything is dark.

我总是对这样的标题感到好笑，这些标题就像在乡下一切都是黑暗的。

I live deep in the 1,000 acre woods in a valley ringed by mountains, no street lights, no houses visible but I rarely need to resort to a flash light even with no artificial light.

我住在群山环抱的山谷里1000英亩的树林深处，没有路灯，看不到房子，但即使没有人造光，我也很少需要使用闪光灯。

We have the moon and stars for company.

我们有月亮和星星为伴。

Both are quite bright much of the time.

两者大部分时间都非常明亮。

Note I'm not saying I want the bright lights of the city.

请注意，我并不是说我想要城市的明亮灯光。

Not at all!

一点也不！

I'm simply pointing out that even deep out in the country side without artificial lights there is still lots of light at night from nature.

我只是想指出，即使在没有人造光的乡村深处，夜间仍然有很多来自大自然的光。

I think it's only when you're deep in the country that you realize how bright to moon really is, particularly the full moon.

我想只有当你深入这个国家时，你才会意识到月亮有多么明亮，尤其是满月。

It will actually cast a shadow.

它实际上会投射阴影。

Being in an area with a lot of artificial light actually masks the effect of moonlight, so people in places like that underestimate it.

处于人造光较多的区域实际上掩盖了月光的影响，因此在这样的地方的人们低估了月光的影响。

This is an important subject, but the author is a better poet than prose writer.

这是一个重要的主题，但作者是一位比散文作家更好的诗人。

This reads like it was written by a high school student completing a vocabulary assignment, what with all of its overreaching and sloppy bombast, revealing an author a a little out of her depth.

这读起来就像是一个完成词汇作业的高中生写的，充满了夸张和草率的夸夸其谈，揭示了作者的深度有点超出了她的深度。

OK everybody, get ready to start media- and then government-mandated bumping into things; the Left has discovered the wonderful virtue of darkness (as if they weren't eternally shrouded in it already.)

好吧，大家准备好开始媒体——然后是政府强制的碰撞；左派已经发现了黑暗的奇妙美德（就好像他们还没有永远被黑暗笼罩一样。）

Oh, good God.

哦，天哪。

Not *everything* can be reduced to political rhetoric.

并非“一切”都可以归结为政治言论。

Grow up.

长大。

I think that more damaging to our psyche is the constant racket we have to endure throughout the day AND night.

我认为对我们的心灵造成更大伤害的是我们必须日以继夜地忍受不断的喧闹。

The boom boxes, the thump boxes in cars, the dogs barking in the 'burbs constantly, idiots revving their bikes and souped up cars without caring about anybody else's privacy or the right to reasonable peace.

汽车里的音箱、重击箱、郊区不断吠叫的狗、加速自行车和改装汽车的白痴，根本不关心任何人的隐私或合理和平的权利。

The cops cars, ambulances, jack hammers and noisy trucks, screeching kids throwing tantrums at the supermarket while the mothers watch or not watch,,aeroplanes flying so low it nearly takes your roof away, jet skis and other noisy water born pests upsetting a quiet fisherman on the bank or an otherwise quiet beach.

警车、救护车、凿岩机和吵闹的卡车，尖叫的孩子在超市里发脾气，而母亲们在看或不看，飞机飞得如此之低，几乎把你的屋顶掀掉，摩托艇和其他吵闹的水生害虫扰乱了岸边或其他安静海滩上安静的渔夫。

And that is only the beginning.

而这仅仅是开始。

No wonder we are half deaf and neurotic, trying to murder one another occasionally out of some or other miniscule frustration .We became an intolerant selfish lot, not really caring about anybody else.

难怪我们是半聋子和神经质的，偶尔会因为一些或其他微小的挫折而试图谋杀彼此。我们变成了一群不宽容的自私的人，并不真正关心别人。

I am not saying that we all are like that .

我并不是说我们都是这样。

Only perhaps a minority, making the life miserable for the rest of us.

也许只是少数，让我们其他人的生活变得悲惨。

San Pedro is a wonderful place.

圣佩德罗是一个很棒的地方。

A couple of miles out of town a French guy, a retired astronomer, has set up a telescope park in his back garden.

离城几英里远的地方，一位法国人，一位退休的天文学家，在他的后花园里建立了一个望远镜公园。

I remember drinking pisco sours while looking at Neptune for the very first time.

我记得第一次观看海王星时喝了皮斯科酸酒。

Even without a telescope the stars were extraordinary - bright enough to see you way around by (there was no Moon).

即使没有望远镜，星星也很非凡——明亮到足以让你看到周围的一切（没有月亮）。

Rebecca, great article on an important topic.

丽贝卡，关于重要主题的精彩文章。

Thanks for helping to get the word out.

感谢您帮助宣传。

Filters are available for the iPad to filter out the blue light.

iPad 可以使用滤镜来滤除蓝光。

One is the TechArmor RetinaShield.

其中之一是 TechArmor RetinaShield。

Sound common sense.

健全的常识。

A recent trip to Hong Kong led me down the path of insanity.

最近的一次香港之旅让我走上了疯狂的道路。

See my obscurely linked exhibition review @ http://www.davidlhume.com/fine-art/

请参阅我模糊链接的展览评论@http://www.davidlhume.com/fine-art/

New technologies are emerging that could radically reduce our need to sleep - if we can bear to use them

新技术的出现可以从根本上减少我们的睡眠需求——如果我们能够忍受使用它们的话

It costs nothing to click, respond and retweet.

点击、回复和转发不需要任何费用。

But what price do we pay in our relationships and our peace of mind?

但我们在人际关系和内心平静方面付出了什么代价呢？

Travel the world, but work on New York time.

环游世界，但按纽约时间工作。

This is what I learned about circadian rhythms by unravelling my own

这是我通过解开自己的昼夜节律了解到的