World's Northernmost Town Gets Nightlights 144
Velcroman1 writes "On October 26, 2,000 Norwegians watched the sun set. The next time they'll see it rise? Sometime in February. Extended nighttime is an annual occurrence for the residents of Longyearbyen, Norway — Earth's northernmost town. Located at 78 degrees north latitude in the Arctic circle, Longyearbyen experiences a phenomenon called Polar Night, in which the town remains in perpetual darkness for four months each winter. To lighten up the seemingly endless night, Philips has started an experiment called 'Wake Up the Town.' And anyone who's complained about the brief daylight hours in winter will want to know how it works."
No it is not (Score:3, Interesting)
It depends on your definition of what a "town" is. Hammerfest has about 9000 people. Honningsvåg is nearby and farthern north in Norway and has about 2500. Longyearbyen has about 2000 people, and is much farther north than any spot in Norway proper. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, there are small settlements in Svalbard farther north, including Ny-Ålesund which is about 50km north of it, and home to about 35 people year-round (over 120 in summer).
If you make some arbitrary designation on the smallest thing that can be called a town, then you could find one that makes it Hammerfest, I suppose.
Re:Slashvertising? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some 20 years ago I first heard about winter depression and light therapy to solve it, as winter depression is caused by not enough light. People are always happier when the sun shines than when it's cloudy all day: light is considered the reason.
At the time the suggestion was to wear some headgear that would shine two fairly bright lights in your eyes from above (similar to the sun: it's direct light hits your eye, but doesn't blind you as you're not looking at it directly). Said to work quite well.
I've been in the north of Norway during July (permanent day!), and the locals also told me that it's very easy to get depressed in winter due to the lack of daylight, and how everyone is looking forward to the return of the sun.
Wake up lights aren't bright enough (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a wake up light, and I have supplemented it with one of those bright anti-depression lights on a timer. So when the wake up light hits maximum brightness, the 40W fluorescent comes on -- and THAT works.
Re:This is an advertisement! (Score:4, Interesting)
I understand your joke, but it can still be done.
You tell your subjects you're testing one thing, but you're testing another (with or without the knowledge of the tester).
With these lights one could set up two groups; saying you want to test who has more problems getting out of bed in the morning, those with a traditional alarm or those with the light-based alarm clock (which is what I know these devices for). And then over the course of a month or two you interview the subjects every week and in that interview ask about getting up, but actually rate them on depression/happiness. This way you at least eliminate (most of) the placebo effect, and may get some interesting side results too, like whether they actually work to get you out of bed easier, albeit those results are likely less reliable.
Light makes a huge difference... to some people (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Finland. Not as north as this town (obviously) but in a place with a few hours of light a day for a large part of the winter. And yes, it indeed causes a lot of depression. Or, I don't know whether one can say "Causes" but certainly amplifies. Let's say you're feeling down and then you won't see sunlight for a week (+don't feel like going outside because the temperature is at [-25C/-13F])... Yeah, it's a lot worse.
But different people react to it in different ways. A few days ago, some foreign exchange students asked my sister about how dark it gets in the mid-winter and how can they cope with the depression. She answered that if they aren't feeling down yet, they probably won't. I don't know if it is about genes, nutrition or what but some people just feel down because of the darkeness, others won't.
That brings me to the next subject... Actually, the mid-winter isn't the worst time. There is snow, a lot of it. It is cold and dark, sure... But the white snow is beautiful and any light that you have (stars, moon, northern lights, street lights...) is reflected from it in really nice way. The worst time for most people is actually late autumn: It is getting cold and and dark but you know that everything is only going to get colder and darker and there isn't any snow yet... When the mid-winter actually comes, people tend to be a lot happier. And they'll continue to get progressively more joyful all the way to the late summer.
Despite the downsides, I would never want to move to a country with different climate. There is something so very beautiful in this cycle of darkness and light... Captcha: Patriot
Re:Slashvertisement (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice, but my wife would kill me if I used something that would wake her too when I have to get up.
We use alarms for deaf people with a vibrator element that's put under the mattress cover, so only 1 person wakes up and not everybody else in the room/house.
Best thing I ever had.
http://www.harriscomm.com/catalog/default.php?cPath=42_123 [harriscomm.com]
Re:Slashvertising? (Score:3, Interesting)
I still remember an episode of Northern Exposure [wikipedia.org] where one of the characters was walking around with that silly headgear on. Not that that made any sense, mind you, since the town where that show was set seemed to exist in a fictional world where they were both below the tree line and above the arctic circle.
Re:Depressing. (Score:2, Interesting)
Even more depressing... reading that article, I realized that it is actually advertising boilerplate for the Phillips Wake Up Light--an ad that was presented as news. Who needs journalists when you can get spin directly from corporations? Tells you a lot about the quality of Fox news.