Poll Would you like a night Sun?

[Artlav]

Would you like to have an artificial Sun at night?
The question is aimed mostly at the inhabitants of big cities.

Imagine that a large solar mirror was positioned in space and designed to be able to give a daylight-scale illumination of your 20-40 Km diameter city at night, reducing dark-covered crime, road accidents, saving millions in electricity spent on illumination and carbon emissions.

The company that made the mirror runned it for a week, then turned it off and posted a vote - would you want it to keep running, or should we sell it to the military or something.

What would you say?

 

[computerex]

I suppose if we can have a solar mirror for night it wouldn't be a problem to add the "night simulator" suit within the house....

 

[Quick_Nick]

I don't think a lot of people could adapt to something like this. (not to mention animals)
Also, I imagine climate change may be quite likely with something like this.
Possibly most importantly... I'm an astronomer. XD

 

[willy88]

Cities already have enough light pollution without a gigantic mirror in space. I'd also imagine that it would get quite hot in the "perpetual daylight" zones. Additionally, I like night.

 

[Brycesv1]

id rather be out at night than in the daylight. the last thing id want is more light

 

[Xyon]

Don't take away my shadows! Where will I lurk?

 

[Zatnikitelman]

Talk about messing with the balance of things...
Night exists for a reason, don't plants need a certain period without sunlight to properly grow?

 

[orb]

I'd vote, but I'm torn between "Yes - every night" and "No - astronomer". But since astronomy isn't reliable in big cities, and I don't live in a big city, if there was one in the poll, I'd vote to "Yes, but if only focused on cities without exterior flora" (can you find any?). And then darkness for sleeping (or interior flora) can be achieved with window blinds for example, if one can't sleep without it (but personally I don't need it to fall asleep).

 

[Sky Captain]

I`d like it there already are full of artificial lights in every major city so why not replace all those with one big light that don`t require electricity to run.

 

[T.Neo]

Yes, all the time, provided it was only partial light (just barely enough to see colour, or perhaps even less, almost like the light of a full Moon, every night).

Plants grow when exposed to more sunlight. I've never heard of them needing to be starved of sunlight for a certain period of time to live or grow.

We already have streetlights and such, and animals/humans can sleep through that, so I don't think it would be so much of a problem.

Climate would be an interesting issue relating to the reflector. You would save on emissions relating to power generation, but the reflector would reflect more heat energy onto the Earth. Perhaps this could be circumvented be making sure the mirror material doesn't reflect heat well. You might also be able to filter out UV rays, thus reducing any potential cancer risk.

Perhaps it would be better to have mirrors focused on sparsely populated farmland regions, or even above-sunlight (but still tolerable) concentration on vertical farms and such.

 

[Donamy]

It's daylight for most of the summer in upper Alaska. I don't think reflected light would have a warming effect, I think it be the opposite, with the lack of heat from the lights.

 

[T.Neo]

There are also multiple applications for an orbital mirror system.

- City illumination inlucing but not limited to:

- For-the-fun-of-it everynight or selected nights city illumination

- Illumination for sports events

- Illumination of high-latitude settlements during winter

- Illumination for safety purposes (driving etc)

- Farm illumination

- Illumination of oceanic zones being used in phytoplankton based carbon sequestration excersises

- Illumination of military excersises (just as an illumination technique: we have laws against space weaponisation, and mirrors would be built as to not allow focusing into destructive beams)

- Weather alteration, to cause increased evaporation in an effort to relieve droughts etc.


You could also "focus" the mirror parabola by making it flexible. This way you could go from sunlight on a small area for sporting events, to moonlight over a medium area for every night, to a "flat disk" of a mirror that would reflect negligible light on a large area for star parties etc.

 

[orb]

Plants grow when exposed to more sunlight. I've never heard of them needing to be starved of sunlight for a certain period of time to live or grow.

I don't know how would they react to "natural" continuous light, but I've found this for tomato: http://www.actahort.org/books/418/418_19.htm

Several parameters of the photosynthetic process were investigated in [highlight]continuous-light injured tomato plants[/highlight] in an effort to clarify the metabolic processes leading to injury.

(...snip...)

Despite the development of visible mottled chlorosis soon after exposure to continuous light, pigment levels were not measurably lower than those of controls grown under a 12-hour photoperiod until [highlight]injury was quite severe[/highlight], indicating that pigment levels in green areas of the leaf compensated for pigment losses in chlorotic areas.

 

[Linguofreak]

Yes, all the time, provided it was only partial light (just barely enough to see colour, or perhaps even less, almost like the light of a full Moon, every night).

Plants grow when exposed to more sunlight. I've never heard of them needing to be starved of sunlight for a certain period of time to live or grow.

Certain plants need to flower at certain times of year and use day length to time flowering. If they're too far north or south, the days stay long until there's not enough warm days left for them to produce seeds before it gets too cold to do so.

If kept under artificial lighting so that day length never drops off, I'd say they'd probably never flower.

We already have streetlights and such, and animals/humans can sleep through that, so I don't think it would be so much of a problem.

Artlav specified "daylight scale illumination", which is thousands of times brighter than that.

 

[T.Neo]

Artlav specified "daylight scale illumination", which is thousands of times brighter than that.

Yes, but I didn't.

Either way, I would imagine it would be hard to find any sort of useful plant life in a large city, let alone a delicate natural ecosystem to destroy...

 

[RisingFury]

Plants grow when exposed to more sunlight. I've never heard of them needing to be starved of sunlight for a certain period of time to live or grow.

Maybe a nice highschool assumption, but incorrect. So is the assumption that increased CO2 levels lead to better growth of plants.

Turns out that both continious sunlight and increased concentrations of CO2 cause injury to plants.

 

[T.Neo]

Turns out that both continious sunlight and increased concentrations of CO2 cause injury to plants.

It all has to do with the amount, I suppose. Both hightened CO2 and radiation levels can "injure" humans, but there are levels that are considered safe and unsafe, and marginally safe.

Maybe a nice highschool assumption,

Funny you say that, since I was never taught about altered light doses on plants in school... :hmm:

 

[RisingFury]

Funny you say that, since I was never taught about altered light doses on plants in school... :hmm:

No no no... I mean that it's an assumption one might be encoraged to make in a highschool science class, but needs a lot of further investigation.

The assumption is:
Plants "feed" on CO2.
More CO2 = more "food" for plants.
More food for plants = faster growth.

 

[Linguofreak]

- Illumination of military excersises (just as an illumination technique: we have laws against space weaponisation, and mirrors would be built as to not allow focusing into destructive beams)

If you can do "Sunlight on a small area," as you proposed below for sporting events, you have the potential to weaponize fairly easily (such as by turning multiple mirrors on the same spot). It might not be "blam" style weaponization, but a few days of 120 F (call it 50 C) in a row, without any cooloff during the night, should be pretty damaging.

You could also "focus" the mirror parabola by making it flexible. This way you could go from sunlight on a small area for sporting events, to moonlight over a medium area for every night, to a "flat disk" of a mirror that would reflect negligible light on a large area for star parties etc.

 

[Donamy]

My daughter's hampster, wouldn't know when to run on it's wheel anymore.