As a Warning
This night-goggles view of Earth shows the massive amounts of electricity being used worldwide after dark. Beautiful, but startling, too, when you consider how energy resources are dwindling while the worldwide population is becoming ever more urban. But for scientists like Marc Imhoff of NASA, the visual is as much a tool as it is a harbinger: Such "light maps" provide an unprecedented way to measure urban sprawl's effects on things like global food production and the planet's atmosphere. "For the first time in history, we can understand the earth as a complete system," Imhoff says. And that kind of knowledge may literally be power.
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