Well of Souls Forums

Arioch wrote:Also, notice in the image (click for enlarged version) all the lights off the coast of Louisiana. Some of them must be islands, but can they all be? Perhaps ships and/or oil platforms?

Oil rigs.

Arioch wrote:In the global version, it's interesting that the Beligum/Netherlands and northern Italy areas are so bright.

Heh. That´s because they have all of their highways, turnpikes and overland roads lit up with gazillions of hellish bright street lamps. It´s no fun to drive there at night, it really buggers. Hidden subsidies to the electric suppliers, a courtesy from the tax payers...

Trantor wrote:

Arioch wrote:In the global version, it's interesting that the Beligum/Netherlands and northern Italy areas are so bright.

Heh. That´s because they have all of their highways, turnpikes and overland roads lit up with gazillions of hellish bright street lamps. It´s no fun to drive there at night, it really buggers. Hidden subsidies to the electric suppliers, a courtesy from the tax payers...

Not any more for the highways. Last time I drove through the Netherlands (a few years back already), the highways were dark after rush hours. And only last summer Belgium followed suit on the (admittedly short) stretches of highway between exits.
Most secondary roads are still illuminated, and since in the heartland there's a village every 3 kilometer (call it 1,5 miles, tops), a medium town every 15 km, and a big city every 40 km, that's still alot of illumination for domestic purposes.

On the map, what drew my attention where those two islands/atols east of Madagascar (southeastern African island), but then I realised those are two French oversea departments (Réunion and Mauritius). Things are pretty crowded there with about 2 million people spread out over barely 4500 square kilometers.

GeoModder wrote:

Trantor wrote:Heh. That´s because they have all of their highways, turnpikes and overland roads lit up with gazillions of hellish bright street lamps. It´s no fun to drive there at night, it really buggers. Hidden subsidies to the electric suppliers, a courtesy from the tax payers...

Not any more for the highways. Last time I drove through the Netherlands (a few years back already), the highways were dark after rush hours. And only last summer Belgium followed suit on the (admittedly short) stretches of highway between exits.

That´s the afterglow then. See how hellish bright they were?

Trantor wrote:That´s the afterglow then. See how hellish bright they were?

Quite an idea actually: Belgium and the Netherlands being responsible for the background radiation of the universe.

look at it from another way, we humans have managed to do something rather awesome, we have lit up a planet! ... now lets go find another one to play with too.