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Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by tzs on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @11:11PM (#21330707)
One interesting property of LEDs compared to many other lighting technologies is that they can be turned on and off very quickly.

Suppose you made all your LED lights so that they alternated 2.08333 ms on, 2.08333 ms off. That's a 240 Hz flicker rate, which should be high enough that it won't bother people.

Further, suppose you synchronized the flicker of all the lights in a city so that they were all on at the same time, and all off at the same time.

Finally, suppose you made some goggles that had a shutter system opened for 1.5625 ms out of every 4.16667 ms, and synchronized it with the LED flickering so that the shutter opens 0.520833 ms after the LEDs start their off phase. The shutter will then be closing just as the LEDs turn on.

By the time the shutter opens, the LEDs will have been off for 0.520833 ms. Light travels 156 km in that time, so the last light from the on phase of all LEDs within 156 km of the goggles will have already reached the goggles by the time the shutter opens.

Question: would this effectively make the LEDs invisible to you through the goggles, while letting you see non-LED sources such as stars with no interference other than the 62.5% of their light you are losing during the times when the shutter is closed?

One problem I can see (no pun intended) is that many LED lights actually use a bulb coated with phosphors, and the LED in the bulb is used to excite the phosphors which then glow giving off the light that we see. I'm not sure how quickly the phosphor stops glowing when the driving LED turns off.

Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by tambourine_man on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @01:17AM (#21331318)
That’s a nice thought experiment but I believe reflection and scattering would still provide some sort of “after glow”
Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by est31 on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @05:10AM (#21332707)
Even if a material reflects 100% of the incoming light, the light has to bounce around quite often in order to stick around for the time where the LEDs are off. In fact it has to travel 156 km somehow. Suppose a ray hits an object and doesn't get reflected. Then it has to be reflected at the right angle to hit another object, and another one and another one, until it has traveled the 156 km. Each time, it can also be reflected into the sky or be absorbed. I'd argue that within the time, most of the light will have escaped or been absorbed. Unless there are materials that have an after glow like you describe.
Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by pjc50 on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @05:25AM (#21332801)
> One problem I can see (no pun intended) is that many LED lights actually use a bulb coated with phosphors, and the LED in the bulb is used to excite the phosphors which then glow giving off the light that we see. I'm not sure how quickly the phosphor stops glowing when the driving LED turns off.

Unfortunately this is how all white LEDs work, and the retention time is tens of miliseconds. It's an interesting idea though, based on the old shutter 3D goggles. Since it would rely on the eye adapting to the flickering darkness, it would be very dependent on how good the light seal round the edges of the goggles is.

Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by aeternum on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @03:08AM (#21331935)
Having everyone wear some high tech impressively synchronized googles would be cool and all, but why not just use an opaque or reflective cover?
Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by dredmorbius on Thursday October 24, 2019 @12:04PM (#21345977)
What if "someone" is an astronomical observatory?
Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by the8472 on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @05:44AM (#21332902)
At least for greenhouses it might be simpler to require narrow-band LEDs and matching narrow-band filter glasses.
Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by e12e on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @06:53AM (#21333272)
Isn't sunlight much more powerful in terms of energy than these lights? Couldn't we use a "one-way" mirror to reflect the led/lights inside, and still allow sunlight in during the day? The additional reflections inside the greenhouse might more than make up for the "shade" provided by the "one-way" mirror?

(now, AFAIK there are no actual one-way mirrors, simply semi transparent (both directions) - question is if we cut 70-80% of the leds escaping, would 20-30% sunlight entering be enough?)

Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by the8472 on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @09:21AM (#21334324)
LEDs are supplemental. Sunlight gives you about 1kW/m² for free, it's hard to beat that. So anything that sacrifices a large fraction of sunlight is probably a non-starter, especially during the colder seasons where you also need it to keep the glasshouse warm.
Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by e12e on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @12:29PM (#21336248)
I suppose you could always go for semi-transparent - so not reflect but absorb a fraction of the light?
Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by Roark66 on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @06:33AM (#21333171)
The problem would be that those narrow band glass filters would also block those narrow bands in daylight needed by the plants. They would have to have those LEDs on 24/7 which means a greenhouse is no better than a basement with no daylight.

I think they should simply use curtains or shutters that close at night. I'm surprised a modern country like Netherlands has no laws regarding light pollution.

Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by the8472 on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @09:19AM (#21334312)
I was actually talking about glasses for humans, but I will roll with your argument anyway:

Plants are not narrow-band absorbers. They can utilize rather wide ranges of red and blue light. So if you blocked out a very narrow band there they would still get most of the sunlight. During the night they would simply harvest photons from those narrow bands, they don't care. But the photons wouldn't escape the glasshouse.

But yes, shutters are probably much cheaper than narrowband light sources and matching filters.

Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by roel_v on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @06:56AM (#21333286)
Or just curtains?
Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by stuaxo on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @04:16AM (#21332383)
I have a friend with a condition a bit like epilepsy and LEDs set him off all the time.

Attacks have even been brought on by passing cyclists with red LED lights.

Weirdly my older Phillips hue does not, so either that is not flickering or it is doing it much faster.

Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by faceplanted on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @06:36AM (#21333187)
LED lightbulbs are different from the bare LED's on a bike light, they use blue LED's under a layer of phosphor that absorbs it and re-emits a variety of shorter wavelengths simulating white light and different colour temperatures.
Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by ricardobeat on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @08:39AM (#21333937)
Most cheap light fixture LEDs flicker. You can test easily using your mobile phone camera if it has a 120-240hz mode.
Re:The Ever-Present Glow of LED Greenhouses by Zardoz84 on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @06:09AM (#21333046)
It would not work to fix the light pollution problem.

* Wild animals, don't have these glasses, so they will keep being strongly affected.

* The light get scattered on the atmosphere, buildings, clouds, etc, so a weird range of time shifts would occur.

* This wouldn't work if you are trying to do photos !