“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”  – Terry Pratchett

On the night of 17 January 1994, the Los Angeles Emergency Operations Centre received numerous emergency calls. They reported a huge glowing something hovering over the night sky. Shortly before, there had been a massive earthquake, as a result of which the power supply to the entire city had collapsed. But what seemed to hover menacingly over the city was not related to the events on the west coast of North America. It was the Milky Way. Because of the sudden darkness - the complete absence of electric light - the galaxy to which our planet belongs was visible.
Darkness and night serve as metaphors for the unclear and hidden. Light, on the other hand, locates insight, security, and enlightenment. Thanks to technical progress, we communicate, treat and orient ourselves with light. It almost seems as if humankind wants to break free from the natural rhythm of day and night using the concept of enlightenment. The invention of the electric light bulb at the end of the 19th century initiated this fundamental transformation of our society. As awareness of the manifold consequences of our actions increases, the question arises whether artificial independence from our sun should not be reconsidered.