He wouldn’t be surprised if it happened someday, though. “How incredibly disconnected we have become from that aspect of nature,” Barentine said. When I asked John Barentine, the director of public policy at the International Dark-Sky Association, a nonprofit that works to mitigate light pollution, he began to lament. This would be a depressing defeat, and quite dystopian. What if, instead of sentencing ourselves to many more years of starless night skies, we constructed a new one, furnished with artificial objects launched high into space, engineered to do the twinkling instead? Some light-loving crusaders have proposed adding more artificial light-even an artificial moon-to the night sky, raising an uncomfortable but intriguing question: What if we gave up on the stars altogether? Even outside dense urban centers, light pollution has become inescapable for most people on Earth, and things aren’t getting any dimmer. We settle for a sprinkle here and there, if we’re lucky, or the moon. Many city dwellers have all but given up on seeing a night sky glittering with countless cosmic specks. If a pinprick of light does shine through, it might be a star-or, as you’d soon realize, it might be another artificial fixture of the modern world, a plane or a satellite. The stars, the radiant objects that gave rise to this cityscape-to all things, really-are nowhere to be seen. The Washington Monument cuts the night sky like a birthday candle in a dark room.
![look towards the stars and not look towards the stars and not](https://quotefancy.com/media/wallpaper/3840x2160/2021381-Stephen-Hawking-Quote-Look-up-at-the-stars-not-down-at-your-feet.jpg)
![look towards the stars and not look towards the stars and not](https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/hires/2018/thepowerofth.jpg)
#Look towards the stars and not windows#
The bright beams of passing cars throw luminous tracks across the pavement, and the windows of homes and offices, restaurants and shops, glow gold even from miles away.
![look towards the stars and not look towards the stars and not](https://eeggs.com/images/items/560.full.jpg)
In the middle of the night, the view from the rooftop of my eight-story building is bursting with light.