Now that we’ve flipped the calendar page to January, it’s a chance to celebrate that 2015 has been declared the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015) by the United Nations. We don’t take this opportunity – pardon the pun – lightly.  This is for several reasons. First, our jobs revolve around light.  We work for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which is a telescope in space that observes X-rays from the Universe. X-rays are a kind of light. In fact, there are many different kinds of light, but only one that the human eye can detect naturally (called optical, or “visible,” light).

Millions of people are needlessly dying because a fifth of the world’s population does not have access to electric light, Royal Philips, the global leader in lighting, warns today. More than 1.3 billion people  are trapped in light poverty as they don’t have access to electricity. Most of those affected resort to kerosene lamps and candles to light their homes and businesses. But these primitive light sources claim the lives of 1.5 million people  every year through respiratory illnesses and fires – the same number killed annually by HIV-related diseases.