Better than sunshine: See life in an improved light

AT FIRST blush, Prometheus’s punishment might seem like an overreaction. For the minor crime of giving humanity a bit of fire to kick-start civilisation, he was sentenced to an eternity of getting his liver pecked out by an angry bird.

But maybe the Greeks were on to something with their punishment for messing with the natural order of light and dark. With night-time now optional and our metropolises growing ever brighter, we’ve begun to realise that a 24/7 society has consequences. It affects sleep patterns, creates health problems and just generally alters performance and mood in a bad way.

The levels of artificial light in our society show no signs of abating, yet they may not need to. The latest research is showing that if we could just change the type of light, we could restore our natural sleep cycles and reverse artificial light’s negative effects. We might even be …

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