The “moment of absolute darkness” is about where people reside. Most people live in the northern hemisphere. Asia, in particular, is where 60% of the world’s population lives.
It’s a certain time when 85.92% of people on Earth will be completely in the dark. Including the three twilight phases, population numbers are used to compute it for every minute of every day of the year.
What is the ‘Moment of Absolute Darkness?’
When Eurasia, which includes Europe, is added, that number increases to 70%. According to the authors, only the Americas (10%), New Zealand, and Australia (0.39%) will be bathed in sunlight at the same hour tomorrow, meaning that 123,705 more people will experience nighttime than they do today. According to the forecasts, the greatest darkness will be at 19:56 UTC on Tuesday, December 6, 2022.
Why is December referred to as the “Period of Global Darkness”?
It will be impossible to tell when it is “dark” on December 6 because the Sun will likely only illuminate half of the globe. Despite using population data from 2020, the researchers still managed to come up with many potential dates that could challenge December 6 for the title of “darkest day.”
While the algorithms “identified a single instant when most people experience darkness, they also provided us with a lot of different dates and times during the Northern Hemisphere winter with a nighttime population that is only a few percentages fewer,” according to the researchers. “In the broad scheme of things, we’re just talking about a few tens of thousands of people,” the speaker said.
But December will always be the “moment of worldwide darkness” since the Earth’s axis tilts the northern hemisphere away from the Sun during that month. Therefore, the “top half” of the planet receives the least amount of sunlight.
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