Will the world receive maximum sunlight on July 8?
A claim that 99 per cent of the world’s population on July 8 receives sunlight is doing rounds on the internet. However, the claim turns out to be partially true when fact-checked by Timeanddate.com.
It all started when a Reddit user GiddySwine posted an image of our Day and Night World Map, claiming that 99 per cent of the world’s population is between dawn and dusk on July 8 at 11:15 UTC.
A brief look at the map gives some initial support to the claims. Nearly the entire world’s most populated areas — North America, South America, Europe, Africa and most of Asia, receive some sunlight at the time in question. Australia, New Zealand, parts of Southeast Asia and Antarctica are the only larger landmasses on the night side of Earth.
According to the map, if you count all twilight areas, no matter how dimly lit, the claim is technically correct.
According to the data by Timeanddate.com, 83 per cent of us receive direct sunlight and another 16 per cent receive indirect sunlight. Nearly 256.8 million people— about 3 per cent of the world’s population, are so far behind the curve that no sunlight is visible.
Many people in the slightly brighter nautical twilight zone will miss any daylight. This is especially true for those who live on the twilight zone’s outskirts, within the darkest twilight phase known as astronomical twilight. The sun is 12 to 18 degrees below the horizon here. The indirect sunlight becomes so thin at that angle that it is usually indiscernible to the unaided eye.
Further research says that 93 per cent of the world’s population perceive sunlight on the given date and time.
Despite the large number, the wording in the post, which claims that 99 per cent of the population will ‘experience daylight,’ is somewhat misleading. So, while it is technically true that a large portion of the world’s population experiences some sunlight at 11:15 UTC on July 8, some of those experiencing it will believe it is night.
