Really? Light pollution in the middle of nowhere?

Yes. For roughly the past two decades, at least two-thirds of the U.S. population has not been able to see the Milky Way at all, according to Todd Pitock, writing for Nautilus. “We’re losing the stars,” astronomer Tyler Nordgren told Pitock. “Think about it this way: For 4.5 billion years, Earth has been a planet with a day and a night. Since the electric light bulb was invented, we’ve progressively lit up the night, and have gotten rid of it. Now 99 percent of the population lives under skies filled with light pollution.”

This creates problems, not only aesthetically, but for our health. We’re built to slumber when the sky is dark — so what happens when there’s no more real night, when ambient lights reflected by grey skies play on our closed eyelids? What does it do when that cue to our circadian rhythm is effectively eliminated? There’s no doubt that it can exacerbate insomnia. It can even increase our risk for obesity, depression, diabetes, breast cancer and other maladies, according to the International Dark Sky Association.

I approach those claims with a grain of salt — tempered, though, with the knowledge that so many various aspects of our lives are intertwined. Lighting can indeed affect our health, as does the rest of our environment.