Why the sky is red
“As outdoor lighting becomes increasingly prominent, our night skies are gradually turning from black to red,” blogs Amy Shira Teitel for Discover magazine. “This discovery came from a team of scientists led by Christopher Kyba from the Freie Universitaet and the Leibnitz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries. The scientists were tracking the effects of cloud cover on light pollution when they realized the colour of the night is changing. Their report, entitled Red is the New Black, was just published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. … It’s well known that the daytime sky is blue because the atmosphere scatters shorter blue wavelengths of light more than long red wavelengths. Similarly, the team found that the shorter wavelengths of artificial light are scattered more easily on clear nights. But with cloud cover, the long-wavelength red light that is usually sent out into space on clear nights is scattered back down to Earth. The result is that cloudy nights in urban areas have a reddish glow.”
Lover was almost lost
“A romantic prankster almost suffocated when he mailed himself to his girlfriend in a sealed box – and got lost in the post,” reports Orange Co. UK. “Hu Seng, from Chongqing city, southern China, paid a courier firm to deliver him to partner Li Wang as a joke. But couriers mixed up the address and instead of [spending] 30 minutes in the sealed box, gasping Seng was trapped for nearly three hours. By the time the package finally arrived at his girlfriend’s office, where a friend was waiting to record her surprise on camera, Seng had passed out and had to be revived by paramedics. ‘I didn’t realize it would take so long,’ admitted Seng. ‘I tried to make a hole in the cardboard but it was too thick and I didn’t want to spoil the surprise by shouting.’”
Tourist finds herself missing
“A tourist in Iceland generously volunteered her time to search for a missing woman, only to find out she was, in fact, the missing woman,” says Newser.com. “The debacle began when the woman got off a tour bus at a volcano, then changed her clothes before reboarding. Because the driver didn’t recognize her she was reported as missing, and police spent the weekend looking for her, reports the Reykjavik Grapevine. After taking part in the search itself, it dawned on the woman what was going on, and she informed police.”
Depressed? Let’s tango
“Dancing around life’s inevitable difficulties while retaining mental and emotional balance can require some fancy footwork,” says Pacific Standard magazine. “For those suffering from stress and depression, newly published research finds a promising self-help program involves literally getting out on the dance floor. It’s hard to feel blue while you’re doing the tango. ‘Preliminary results suggest that tango dance is an innovative and promising approach, as effective as mindfulness meditation in reducing levels of self-reported depression,’ writes a team led by psychologist Rosa Pinniger of the University of New England in Australia.” The research is published in the journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine.
Thought du jour
“What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.”
– Pearl Bailey, American actress and singer (1918-90)
