99% world population experience brief period of daylight May 18-July 17

About 99 percent of global population, around 8.2 billion people, will experience daylight or twilight simultaneously on July 8, at about 11:10 GMT.

For a brief period of about a minute, Earth’s most populated areas will all be under the Sun, with only a small fraction experiencing nighttime.

Daylight will stretch across North America, South America, Europe, Africa and most of Asia, where nearly all of the world’s population lives.

Darkness will only be in Australia, New Zealand, parts of Southeast Asia and Antarctica, along with the surrounding oceans.

It is not a single-day phenomenon. About 60 days each year, from May 18 to July 17, there is a brief moment each day during which nearly all of humanity experiences either daylight or twilight.

The phenomenon became widely associated with July 8 following a social media post in 2022 claiming it was the only day this occurred. A subsequent fact check by Time and Date found that while July 8 is one of the dates, similar conditions occur every day for about two months around the Northern Hemisphere summer.

At the moment when sunlight reaches almost everyone on Earth, about 6.9 billion people (83 percent) will be in full daylight.

Another 581 million will experience twilight, when the sky remains bright enough for most outdoor activities without artificial lighting.

A further 498 million people (6 percent) will be in nautical twilight, when the horizon is still visible, but the sky is much darker.

Around 249 million will be in astronomical twilight, with only a faint glow left before complete darkness.

Just one percent (83 million) people will experience full night, and the sky is completely dark.

June solstice is the Northern Hemisphere’s longest day, and marks the beginning of summer.