"The immense popularity of the bright, energy-saving electrical components called light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has been a boon for the environment.
But researchers are also discovering it has come at a rather serious cost.
Thanks partially to solid-state lighting's bigger bang for your buck, the growing problem of light pollution is showing no sign of slowing, which is bad news for our ecosystems and our health.
A big part of the problem is we just don't think of light in the same way we do noxious aerosols or toxic fluids.So when we invent new light-emitting technology, we're less likely to think of the potential cost to the environment – we think of what annoying shadows we can blast away with a few extra bulbs.
The result is as clear as daylight – our world has less darkness than ever before.
Physicist Chris Kyba from the German Research Centre for Geosciences has led a study using satellite data to investigate how brighter our nights are becoming.
And while he doesn't point the finger solely at LEDs, they do represent the problem.
"We'll light something that we didn't light before, like a bicycle path through a park or a section of highway leading outside of town that in the past wasn't lit," says Kyba.
The researchers use the term 'rebound effect' to describe how a savings in energy leaves us with more money that we simply pour back into the product..."
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