116-606: [REDACTED] Look up nightly in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Nightly may refer to: An event which occurs once every night A nightly build of any software The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore , a late-night panel talk show hosted by Larry Wilmore on Comedy Central Nightly (band) , an alternative pop band from Nashville, Tennessee The Nightly , an Australian digital newspaper See also [ edit ] Daily (disambiguation) Topics referred to by
232-587: A night shift . Nightlife , encompassing bars, nightclubs, and cultural venues, has become a significant part of urban culture, contributing to social and political movements. A planet's rotation causes nighttime and daytime . When a place on Earth is pointed away from the Sun, that location experiences night. The Sun appears to set in the West and rise in the East due to Earth's rotation. Many celestial bodies, including
348-903: A vomeronasal organ that enhances their sense of smell. Bats heavily depend on echolocation . Echolocation allows an animal to navigate with their sense of hearing by emitting sounds and listening for the time it takes them to bounce back. Bats emit a steady stream of clicks while hunting insects and home in on prey as thin as human hair. People and other diurnal animals sleep primarily at night. Humans, other mammals, and birds experience multiple stages of sleep visible via electroencephalography . The stages of sleep are wakefulness , three stages of non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM) including deep sleep , and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep . During REM sleep, dreams are more frequent and complex. Studies show that some reptiles may also experience REM sleep. During deep sleep, memories are consolidated into long-term memory . Invertebrates most likely experience
464-494: A "quasi-therapeutic" function, enabling the dreamer to process trauma in a safe place. Revonsuo's 2000 threat simulation hypothesis, whose premise is that during much of human evolution, physical and interpersonal threats were serious, giving reproductive advantage to those who survived them. Dreaming aided survival by replicating these threats and providing the dreamer with practice in dealing with them. In 2015, Revonsuo proposed social simulation theory, which describes dreams as
580-411: A diary. This prevented the selective memory effect, and the dreams no longer seemed accurate about the future. Another experiment gave subjects a fake diary of a student with apparently precognitive dreams. This diary described events from the person's life, as well as some predictive dreams and some non-predictive dreams. When subjects were asked to recall the dreams they had read, they remembered more of
696-692: A divine revelation. For example, the Hebrew prophet Samuel would "lie down and sleep in the temple at Shiloh before the Ark and receive the word of the Lord", and Joseph interpreted a Pharaoh's dream of seven lean cows swallowing seven fat cows as meaning the subsequent seven years would be bountiful, followed by seven years of famine. Most of the dreams in the Bible are in the Book of Genesis . Christians mostly shared
812-427: A dream is one of three states that the soul experiences during its lifetime, the other two states being the waking state and the sleep state. The earliest Upanishads , written before 300 BCE, emphasize two meanings of dreams. The first says that dreams are merely expressions of inner desires. The second is the belief of the soul leaving the body and being guided until awakened. In Judaism, dreams are considered part of
928-421: A dream must first be reduced to a verbal report, which is an account of the subject's memory of the dream, not the subject's dream experience itself. So, dreaming by non-humans is currently unprovable, as is dreaming by human fetuses and pre-verbal infants. Preserved writings from early Mediterranean civilizations indicate a relatively abrupt change in subjective dream experience between Bronze Age antiquity and
1044-514: A dream of a dim star high in the night sky indicated problems in the head region, while low in the night sky indicated bowel issues. Greek philosopher Plato (427-347) wrote that people harbor secret, repressed desires, such as incest, murder, adultery, and conquest, which build up during the day and run rampant during the night in dreams. Plato's student, Aristotle (384–322 BCE), believed dreams were caused by processing incomplete physiological activity during sleep, such as eyes trying to see while
1160-561: A form of sleep as well. Studies on bees, which have complex but unrelated brain structures, have shown improvements in memory after sleep, similar to mammals. Compared to waking life, dreams are sparse with limited sensory detail. Dreams are hallucinatory or bizarre, and they often have a narrative structure. Many hypotheses exist to explain the function of dreams without a definitive answer. Nightmares are dreams that cause distress. The word "night-mare" originally referred to nocturnal demons that were believed to assail sleeping dreamers, like
1276-482: A greater percentage of rod cells. In most mammals, rod cells contain densely packed DNA near the edge of the nucleus. For nocturnal mammals, this is reversed with the densely packed DNA in the center of the nucleus, which reduces the scattering of light. Some nocturnal animals have a mirror, the tapetum lucidum , behind the retina . This doubles the amount of light their eyes can process. The compound eyes of insects can see at even lower levels of light. For example,
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#17327873477531392-399: A lead role in psychotherapy. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology . Most modern dream study focuses on the neurophysiology of dreams and on proposing and testing hypotheses regarding dream function. It is not known where in the brain dreams originate, if there is a single origin for dreams or if multiple regions of the brain are involved, or what the purpose of dreaming is for
1508-462: A major part of the economy and urban planning in modern cities. People who prefer to be active at night are called night owls . Social movements in the 20th century including feminism , black activism, the gay rights movement , and community action blurred the lines between political action and broader cultural activities, making political movements a part of the nightlife. Sociologists have argued that vibrant city nightlife scenes contribute to
1624-516: A metaphor for nocturnal danger. Roman poets like Marcus Manilius and Aratus worked late into the night and incorporated darkness and the night sky into their writing. Since the Age of Enlightenment , nocturnal settings have been a frequent place for passionate chaos as a counterbalance to the rationality present during the day. In Gothic fiction , this absence of rationality offered a space for lust and terror. Ottoman literature portrayed night as
1740-496: A much higher rate. Before the industrial era , night was a time of heightened insecurity. Fear of the night was common but varied in intensity across cultures. Dangers increased due to lower visibility. Injuries and deaths were caused by drowning and falling into pits, ditches, and shafts. People were less able to evaluate others after dark. Due to nocturnal alcohol consumption and the anonymity of darkness, quarrels were more likely to escalate to violence. In medieval Stockholm ,
1856-573: A physician from Hamburg, was the first who suggested that dreams are a need and that they have the function to erase (a) sensory impressions that were not fully worked up, and (b) ideas that were not fully developed during the day. In dreams, incomplete material is either removed (suppressed) or deepened and included into memory. Freud , whose dream studies focused on interpreting dreams, not explaining how or why humans dream, disputed Robert's hypothesis and proposed that dreams preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled those wishes that otherwise would awaken
1972-442: A positive dream about a friend to be meaningful than a positive dream about someone they disliked, for example, and were more likely to view a negative dream about a person they disliked as meaningful than a negative dream about a person they liked. According to surveys, it is common for people to feel their dreams are predicting subsequent life events. Psychologists have explained these experiences in terms of memory biases , namely
2088-656: A prominent forebear, commands the dreamer to take specific actions, and which may predict future events. Framing the dream experience varies across cultures as well as through time. Dreaming and sleep are intertwined. Dreams occur mainly in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep —when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. Because REM sleep is detectable in many species, and because research suggests that all mammals experience REM, linking dreams to REM sleep has led to conjectures that animals dream. However, humans dream during non-REM sleep, also, and not all REM awakenings elicit dream reports. To be studied,
2204-528: A result of observation of his dreams. Ignorant as he was, he could have come to no other conclusion but that, in dreams, he left his sleeping body in one universe and went wandering off into another. It is considered that, but for that savage, the idea of such a thing as a 'soul' would never have even occurred to mankind.... In the Mandukya Upanishad , part of the Veda scriptures of Indian Hinduism ,
2320-575: A rite of passage, fasting and praying until an anticipated guiding dream was received, to be shared with the rest of the tribe upon their return. Beginning in the late 19th century, Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud , founder of psychoanalysis , theorized that dreams reflect the dreamer's unconscious mind and specifically that dream content is shaped by unconscious wish fulfillment. He argued that important unconscious desires often relate to early childhood memories and experiences. Carl Jung and others expanded on Freud's idea that dream content reflects
2436-465: A selective memory for accurate predictions and distorted memory so that dreams are retrospectively fitted onto life experiences. The multi-faceted nature of dreams makes it easy to find connections between dream content and real events. The term "veridical dream" has been used to indicate dreams that reveal or contain truths not yet known to the dreamer, whether future events or secrets. In one experiment, subjects were asked to write down their dreams in
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#17327873477532552-524: A simulation for training social skills and bonds. Eagleman's and Vaughn's 2021 defensive activation theory, which says that, given the brain's neuroplasticity , dreams evolved as a visual hallucinatory activity during sleep's extended periods of darkness, busying the occipital lobe and thereby protecting it from possible appropriation by other, non-vision, sense operations. Erik Hoel proposes, based on artificial neural networks, that dreams prevent overfitting to past experiences; that is, they enable
2668-470: A single side. Gangs were uncommon except for housebreaking . The increased humidity of night was deemed the result of vapors and fumes. The annual movements of stars and constellations across the night sky were used to track the passage of time, but other changes in the night sky were interpreted as significant omens . Many daytime religious, governmental, and local social controls dissipated after nightfall. Fortified Christian communities announced
2784-668: A time for forbidden or unrequited love . Night and day were long depicted as opposite conditions. The electric light, the industrial revolution, and shift work brought many aspects of daily life into the night. The author Charles Dickens lived in London during the time of gas lighting and compared the unstable separation between the waking and sleeping city, to the unstable separation he perceived between dream and delusion. Night in contemporary literature offers liminal settings, such as hospitals and gas stations, that contain some aspects of daily life. Night fell, while Helga Crane in
2900-411: Is Neurospora crassa , a bread mold, widely used to study biorhythms. During the day, plants engage in photosynthesis and release oxygen . By night, plants engage in respiration , consuming oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. Plants can draw up more water after sunset, which facilitates new leaf growth. As plants cannot create energy through photosynthesis after sunset, they use energy stored in
3016-637: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Night Night or nighttime is the period of darkness when the Sun is below the horizon . The opposite of nighttime is daytime . Sunlight illuminates one side of the Earth, leaving the other in darkness. Earth's rotation causes the appearance of sunrise and sunset . Moonlight , airglow , starlight , and light pollution dimly illuminate night. The duration of day, night, and twilight varies depending on
3132-474: Is embodied by Nótt . Ratri and Nött are goddesses of sleep and rest, but it's common for personifications to be associated with misfortune. In Aztec Mythology, Black Tezcatlipoca , the "Night Wind", was associated with obsidian and the nocturnal jaguar. In his "Precious Owl" manifestation, the Aztecs regarded Tezcatlipoca as the bringer of death and destruction. The Aztecs anticipated an unending night when
3248-507: Is freed from the body during slumber to journey in a dream realm, while the other remained in the body. This belief and dream interpretation had been questioned since early times, such as by the philosopher Wang Chong (27–97 CE ). The Babylonians and Assyrians divided dreams into "good," which were sent by the gods, and "bad," sent by demons. A surviving collection of dream omens entitled Iškar Zaqīqu records various dream scenarios as well as prognostications of what will happen to
3364-471: Is generally highly phantasmagoric; that is, different locations and objects continuously blend into each other. The visuals (including locations, people, and objects) are generally reflective of a person's memories and experiences, but conversation can take on highly exaggerated and bizarre forms. Some dreams may even tell elaborate stories wherein the dreamer enters entirely new, complex worlds and awakes with ideas, thoughts and feelings never experienced prior to
3480-519: Is the only extant Greek tragedy where night is explicitly invoked and made an element of the story. In the play, night is a time of disorder and confusion that allows Odysseus to sneak into the Trojan camp and kill King Rhesus of Thrace . The handful of surviving classical Classical Greek texts that describe the nocturnal activities of women portray female freedom especially to speak openly, male anxieties about that freedom, and magic that functions as
3596-464: Is the true dream (al-ru’ya), then the false dream, which may come from the devil ( shaytan ), and finally, the meaningless everyday dream (hulm). This last dream could be brought forth by the dreamer's ego or base appetite based on what they experienced in the real world. The true dream is often indicated by Islam's hadith tradition. In one narration by Aisha , the wife of the Prophet, it is said that
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3712-519: Is tidally locked to Earth; it rotates so that one side of the Moon always faces the Earth. The side of the Moon facing away from Earth is called the far side of the Moon and the side facing Earth is called the near side of the Moon . During lunar night on the near side, Earth is 50 times brighter than a full moon. Because the Moon has no atmosphere, there is an abrupt transition from day to night without twilight. Night varies from planet to planet within
3828-670: The Aztec personification of the Milky Way. The elongated Egyptian goddess Nut and N!adima from Botswana are said to consume the Sun at dusk. In the Ancient Egyptian religion , the Sun then travels through the netherworld inside Nut's body, where it is reborn at dawn. Many cultures have personified the night. Ratri is the star-covered Hindu goddess of the night. In the Icelandic Prose Edda , night
3944-570: The Society for Neuroscience , "Because no adequate alternatives exist, much of this research must [sic] be done on animal subjects." However, since animal dreaming can be only inferred, not confirmed, animal studies yield no hard facts to illuminate the neurophysiology of dreams. Examining human subjects with brain lesions can provide clues, but the lesion method cannot discriminate between the effects of destruction and disconnection and cannot target specific neuronal groups in heterogeneous regions like
4060-544: The Solar System . Mars 's dusty atmosphere causes a lengthy twilight period. The refracted light ranges from purple to blue, often resulting in glowing noctilucent clouds . Venus and Mercury have long nights because of their slow rotational periods. The planet Venus rotates once every 243 Earth days. Because of its unusual retrograde rotation, nights last 116.75 Earth days. The dense greenhouse atmosphere on Venus keeps its surface hot enough to melt lead throughout
4176-456: The Tzitzimīmeh , skeletal female star deities, would descend to consume all humans. In classical mythology, the night goddess Nyx is the mother of Sleep , Death , Disease, Strife , and Doom . In Jewish culture and mysticism , the demon Lilith embodies the emotional reactions to darkness including terror, lust, and liberation. Nighttime in the pre-industrial period, often called
4292-819: The battle of the Milvian Bridge if he adopted the Chi-Rho as his battle standard ." In Buddhism, ideas about dreams are similar to the classical and folk traditions in South Asia. The same dream is sometimes experienced by multiple people, as in the case of the Buddha-to-be , before he is leaving his home . It is described in the Mahāvastu that several of the Buddha's relatives had premonitory dreams preceding this. Some dreams are also seen to transcend time:
4408-424: The central nervous system of their prey, allowing the fungi to control the actions of the dying insect. During the late afternoon, the fungi will pilot their prey to higher elevation where wind currents can carry its spores further. The fungi will kill and digest the insect as night falls, extending fruiting bodies from the host's exoskeleton. Few species of fungi have true circadian rhythms. A notable exception
4524-577: The elephant hawk moth can see in color, including ultraviolet , with only starlight. Nocturnal insects navigate using moonlight, lunar phases, infrared vision, the position of the stars, and the Earth's magnetic field. Artificial lighting disrupts the biorhythms of many animals. Night-flying insects that use the moon for navigation are especially vulnerable to disorientation from increasing levels of artificial lighting. Artificial lights attract many night-flying insects that die from exhaustion and nocturnal predators. Decreases in insect populations disrupt
4640-602: The incubus (male) or succubus (female). It was believed that the demons could sit upon a dreamer's chest to suffocate a victim, as depicted in John Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare . Fungi can sense the presence and absence of light, and the nightly changes of most fungi growth and biological processes are direct responses to either darkness or falling temperatures. By night, fungi are more engaged in synthesizing cellular components and increasing their biomass. For example, fungi that preys on insects will infect
4756-531: The loup-garou and rougarou —were believed to be people who transformed into beasts at night. In West Africa and among the African diaspora , there is a widespread tradition of a type of vampire who removes their human skin at night and travels as a blood-sucking ball of light. Variation includes the feu-follet , Surinamese asema , and Caribbean sukuyan , Ashanti obayifo , and Ghanaian asanbosam . The medieval fear of night-flying European witches
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4872-447: The "night season", was associated with darkness and uncertainty. Various cultures have regarded the night as a time when ghosts and other spirits are active on Earth. When Protestant theologians abandoned the concept of purgatory , many came to view reported ghost sightings as the result of demonic activity. In the sixteenth century, Swiss theologian Ludwig Lavater began attempting to explain reported spirits as mistakes, deceit, or
4988-446: The 1600s, the major European cities introduced streetlights. These were lit by lamplighters each evening outside of the summer months. Early street lights were metal and glass enclosures housing candles or oil lamps . They were suspended above streets or mounted on posts. The use of artificial lighting led to an increase in acceptable nightlife. In more rural areas, night remained a period of rest and nocturnal labor. Young adults,
5104-661: The Buddha-to-be has certain dreams that are the same as those of previous Buddhas , the Lalitavistara states. In Buddhist literature, dreams often function as a "signpost" motif to mark certain stages in the life of the main character. Buddhist views about dreams are expressed in the Pāli Commentaries and the Milinda Pañhā . In Chinese history, people wrote of two vital aspects of the soul of which one
5220-673: The Hall study favorably. In the Hall study, the most common emotion experienced in dreams was anxiety . Other emotions included abandonment , anger , fear , joy , and happiness . Negative emotions were much more common than positive ones. The Hall data analysis showed that sexual dreams occur no more than 10% of the time and are more prevalent in young to mid-teens. Another study showed that 8% of both men's and women's dreams have sexual content. In some cases, sexual dreams may result in orgasms or nocturnal emissions . These are colloquially known as "wet dreams". The visual nature of dreams
5336-748: The Looking-Glass . Unlike many dream worlds, Carroll's logic is like that of actual dreams, with transitions and flexible causality. Other fictional dream worlds include the Dreamlands of H. P. Lovecraft 's Dream Cycle and The Neverending Story ' s world of Fantastica, which includes places like the Desert of Lost Dreams, the Sea of Possibilities and the Swamps of Sadness. Dreamworlds, shared hallucinations and other alternate realities feature in
5452-505: The Prophet's dreams would come true like the ocean's waves. Just as in its predecessors, the Quran also recounts the story of Joseph and his unique ability to interpret dreams. In both Christianity and Islam dreams feature in conversion stories. According to ancient authors, Constantine the Great started his conversion to Christianity because he had a dream which prophesied that he would win
5568-488: The Solms 2000 paper that certified the separability of REM sleep and dream phenomena, many studies purporting to uncover the function of dreams have in fact been studying not dreams but measurable REM sleep. Theories of dream function since the identification of REM sleep include: Hobson's and McCarley's 1977 activation-synthesis hypothesis , which proposed "a functional role for dreaming sleep in promoting some aspect of
5684-546: The Sun and shorter when a hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun. As a result, the longest night of the year for the Northern Hemisphere will be the shortest night of the year for the Southern Hemisphere . Night's duration varies least near the equator . The difference between the shortest and longest night increases approaching the poles . At the equator, night lasts roughly 12 hours throughout
5800-635: The United States, invasive brain procedures with a human subject are allowed only when these are deemed necessary in surgical treatment to address medical needs of the same human subject. Non-invasive measures of brain activity like electroencephalogram (EEG) voltage averaging or cerebral blood flow cannot identify small but influential neuronal populations. Also, fMRI signals are too slow to explain how brains compute in real time. Scientists researching some brain functions can work around current restrictions by examining animal subjects. As stated by
5916-490: The background. Lower budget films are more likely to use day for night shooting, larger budget films are more likely to film at night with artificial lighting. Cinematographers have used tinting, filters, color balance settings, and physical lights to color night scenes blue. In low light, people experience the Purkinje effect which causes reds to dim so that more blue is perceived. As light decreases towards total darkness,
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#17327873477536032-473: The beginnings of the classical era . In visitation dreams reported in ancient writings, dreamers were largely passive in their dreams, and visual content served primarily to frame authoritative auditory messaging. Gudea , the king of the Sumerian city-state of Lagash (reigned c. 2144–2124 BCE), rebuilt the temple of Ningirsu as the result of a dream in which he was told to do so. After antiquity,
6148-597: The beliefs of the Hebrews and thought that dreams were of a supernatural character because the Old Testament includes frequent stories of dreams with divine inspiration. The most famous of these dream stories was Jacob's dream of a ladder that stretches from Earth to Heaven . Many Christians preach that God can speak to people through their dreams. The famous glossary, the Somniale Danielis , written in
6264-433: The best way to receive divine revelation, and thus they would induce (or "incubate") dreams. They went to sanctuaries and slept on special "dream beds" in hope of receiving advice, comfort, or healing from the gods. From a Darwinian perspective dreams would have to fulfill some kind of biological requirement, provide some benefit for natural selection to take place, or at least have no negative impact on fitness. Robert (1886),
6380-402: The body or mind. The human dream experience and what to make of it has undergone sizable shifts over the course of history. Long ago, according to writings from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt , dreams dictated post-dream behaviors to an extent that was sharply reduced in later millennia. These ancient writings about dreams highlight visitation dreams, where a dream figure, usually a deity or
6496-446: The brain involves significant neural activity downstream from eye intake, and it is theorized that "the visual imagery of dreams is produced by activation during sleep of the same structures that generate complex visual imagery in waking perception." Dreams present a running narrative rather than exclusively visual imagery. Following their work with split-brain subjects, Gazzaniga and LeDoux postulated, without attempting to specify
6612-467: The brain stem. Denied precision tools and obliged to depend on imaging, much dream research has succumbed to the law of the instrument . Studies detect an increase of blood flow in a specific brain region and then credit that region with a role in generating dreams. But pooling study results has led to the newer conclusion that dreaming involves large numbers of regions and pathways, which likely are different for different dream events. Image creation in
6728-647: The brain's effort to make sense of sparse and distorted information.... The cortex combines this haphazard input with whatever other activity was already occurring and does its best to synthesize a story that makes sense of the information." Neuroscientist Indre Viskontas is even more blunt, calling often bizarre dream content "just the result of your interpreter trying to create a story out of random neural signaling." For many humans across multiple eras and cultures, dreams are believed to have functioned as revealers of truths sourced during sleep from gods or other external entities. Ancient Egyptians believed that dreams were
6844-478: The changes brought by nightfall, including darkness, increased humidity, and lower temperatures. Their responses include direct reactions and adjustments to circadian rhythms , governed by an internal biological clock . These circadian rhythms, regulated by exposure to light and darkness, affect an organism's behavior and physiology . Animals more active at night are called nocturnal and have adaptations for low light, including different forms of night vision and
6960-453: The city's marketability but also something to be managed in order to reduce activities viewed as disorderly, risky, or otherwise problematic. Urban renewal policies have increased the available possibilities for nighttime consumers and decreased the non-commercial nocturnal activities outside of sanctioned festivals and concerts. In literature, night is often associated with mysterious, hidden, dangerous, and clandestine activities. Rhesus
7076-437: The coming darkness with horns, church bells , or drums. This alerted residents—like peasants working the fields—to return home before the city gates shut. The English engaged in a daily process of "shutting in", where valuables were brought into homes before they were bolted, barred, locked, and shuttered . Many English and European towns attempted to impose curfews during the medieval period and gradually loosened
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#17327873477537192-809: The darkness of night. Light and darkness also affect circadian rhythms, the physical and mental changes that occur in a 24-hour cycle. This daily cycle is regulated by an internal " biological clock " that is adjusted by exposure to light. The length and timing of nighttime depend on location and time of year. Organisms that are more active at night possess adaptations to the night's dimmer light, increased humidity, and lower temperatures. Animals that are active primarily at night are called nocturnal and usually possess adaptations for night vision. In vertebrates' eyes, two types of photoreceptor cells sense light. Cone cells sense color but are ineffective in low light; rod cells sense only brightness but remain effective in very dim light. The eyes of nocturnal animals have
7308-440: The day in black and white. The sections of the monochrome film reel with exterior night scenes were soaked in an acidic dye, that tinted the whole scene blue. " Day for night " is a set of cinematic techniques that simulate a night scene while filming in daylight. They include underexposing to the soften scene, using a graduated neutral-density filter to mute lighting, and setting up the artificial lighting to amplify shadows in
7424-577: The development of culture and political movements. David Grazian cites as examples the development of beat poetry , musical styles including bebop , urban blues , and early rock, and the importance of nightlife for the development of the gay rights movement in the United States kicked off by the riots at the Stonewall Inn nightclub in Greenwich Village , Lower Manhattan , New York City . odern cities treat nightlife as necessary to
7540-460: The difference in day to night temperature shifts increases dramatically. Some exoplanets, like those of TRAPPIST-1 , are tidally locked . Tidally locked planets have equal rotation and orbital periods, so one side experiences constant day, and the other side constant night. In these situations, astrophysicists believe that life would most likely develop in the twilight zone between the day and night hemispheres. Living organisms react directly to
7656-508: The dream. People who are blind from birth do not have visual dreams. Their dream contents are related to other senses, such as hearing , touch , smell , and taste , whichever are present since birth. Dream study is popular with scientists exploring the mind–brain problem . Some "propose to reduce aspects of dream phenomenology to neurobiology." But current science cannot specify dream physiology in detail. Protocols in most nations restrict human brain research to non-invasive procedures. In
7772-471: The dreamer may perceive the dream as being much longer than this. The content and function of dreams have been topics of scientific, philosophical and religious interest throughout recorded history . Dream interpretation , practiced by the Babylonians in the third millennium BCE and even earlier by the ancient Sumerians , figures prominently in religious texts in several traditions, and has played
7888-402: The dreamer to learn from novel situations. Dreams figure prominently in major world religions. The dream experience for early humans, according to one interpretation, gave rise to the notion of a human " soul ," a central element in much religious thought. J. W. Dunne wrote: But there can be no reasonable doubt that the idea of a soul must have first arisen in the mind of primitive man as
8004-501: The dreamer's unconscious desires. Dream interpretation can be a result of subjective ideas and experiences. One study found that most people believe that "their dreams reveal meaningful hidden truths". The researchers surveyed students in the United States, South Korea, and India, and found that 74% of Indians, 65% of South Koreans and 56% of Americans believed their dream content provided them with meaningful insight into their unconscious beliefs and desires. This Freudian view of dreaming
8120-530: The dreamer. Freud wrote that dreams "serve the purpose of prolonging sleep instead of waking up. Dreams are the GUARDIANS of sleep and not its disturbers. " A turning point in theorizing about dream function came in 1953, when Science published the Aserinsky and Kleitman paper establishing REM sleep as a distinct phase of sleep and linking dreams to REM sleep. Until and even after publication of
8236-436: The dreamers, where they entered through a keyhole, exiting the same way after the divine message was given. Antiphon wrote the first known Greek book on dreams in the 5th century BCE. In that century, other cultures influenced Greeks to develop the belief that souls left the sleeping body. The father of modern medicine, Hippocrates (460–375 BCE ), thought dreams could analyze illness and predict diseases. For instance,
8352-432: The equator, day quickly transitions to night, while the transition can take weeks near the poles. The duration of twilight is longest at the summer solstice and shortest near the equinoxes. Moonlight , starlight , airglow , and light pollution can dimly illuminates the nighttime, with their diffuse aspects being termed skyglow . The amount of skyglow increases each year due to artificial lighting . Night exists on
8468-552: The experience of the world that can be interpreted and from which lessons can be garnered. It is discussed in the Talmud, Tractate Berachot 55–60. The ancient Hebrews connected their dreams heavily with their religion, though the Hebrews were monotheistic and believed that dreams were the voice of one God alone. Hebrews also differentiated between good dreams (from God) and bad dreams (from evil spirits). The Hebrews, like many other ancient cultures, incubated dreams in order to receive
8584-770: The heightening of other senses. Diurnal animals are active during the day and sleep at night; mammals, birds, and some others dream while asleep. Fungi respond directly to nightfall and increase their biomass. With some exceptions, fungi do not rely on a biological clock. Plants store energy produced through photosynthesis as starch granules to consume at night. Algae engage in a similar process, and cyanobacteria transition from photosynthesis to nitrogen fixation after sunset. In arid environments like deserts, plants evolved to be more active at night, with many gathering carbon dioxide overnight for daytime photosynthesis. Night-blooming cacti rely on nocturnal pollinators such as bats and moths for reproduction. Light pollution disrupts
8700-439: The horizon. During nautical twilight, the horizon is visible enough for navigation. "Astronomical" twilight continues until the Sun has sunk 18 degrees below the horizon. Beyond 18 degrees, refracted sunlight is no longer visible. The period when the sun is 18 or more degrees below either horizon is called astronomical night. Similar to the duration of night itself, the duration of twilight varies according to latitude . At
8816-441: The human eye has more scotopic vision , relying more rod cells and less able to perceive color. Night photography can capture the natural colors of night by increasing the exposure time , or length of time captured in the photography. Longer exposures open the possibility for photographers to use light painting to selectively illuminate a scene. Digital photography can also make use of high-ISO settings , which increase
8932-508: The late evening into the early morning. It has traditionally included venues such as pubs , bars , nightclubs , live music , concerts , cabarets , theatre , Hookah lounges , cinemas , and shows. Nightlife entertainment is often more adult -oriented than daytime entertainment. It also includes informal gatherings like parties , botellón , gymkhanas , bingo , and amateur sports. In many cities, there has been an increasing focus on nightlife catering to tourists. Nightlife has become
9048-439: The learning process...." In 2010 a Harvard study was published showing experimental evidence that dreams were correlated with improved learning. Crick's and Mitchison's 1983 " reverse learning " theory, which states that dreams are like the cleaning-up operations of computers when they are offline, removing (suppressing) parasitic nodes and other "junk" from the mind during sleep. Hartmann's 1995 proposal that dreams serve
9164-639: The limited water availability in arid environments like deserts . The stomata of cacti do not open until night. When the temperature drops, the pores open to allow the cacti to store carbon dioxide for photosynthesis the next day, a process known as crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM). Cacti and most night-blooming plants use CAM to store up to 99% of the carbon dioxide they use in daily photosynthesis. Ceroid cacti often have flowers that bloom at night and fade before sunrise. As few bees are nocturnal, night-flowering plants rely on other pollinators including moths, beetles, and bats. These flowers rely more on
9280-399: The majority of murders were committed while intoxicated. Crime and fear of crime increased at night. In pre-industrial Europe, criminals disguised themselves with hats, face paint, or cloaks . Thieves would trip pedestrians with ropes laid across streets and dismount horse riders using long poles extended from the roadside shadows. They used "dark lanterns" where light could be shined through
9396-518: The name of Daniel , attempted to teach Christian populations to interpret their dreams. Iain R. Edgar has researched the role of dreams in Islam . He has argued that dreams play an important role in the history of Islam and the lives of Muslims, since dream interpretation is the only way that Muslims can receive revelations from God since the death of the last prophet, Muhammad . According to Edgar, Islam classifies three types of dreams. Firstly, there
9512-594: The narrative; The Book of the Duchess and The Vision Concerning Piers Plowman are two such dream visions . Even before them, in antiquity, the same device had been used by Cicero and Lucian of Samosata . Dreams have also featured in fantasy and speculative fiction since the 19th century. One of the best-known dream worlds is Wonderland from Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , as well as Looking-Glass Land from its sequel, Through
9628-411: The neural mechanisms, a " left-brain interpreter " that seeks to create a plausible narrative from whatever electro-chemical signals reach the brain's left hemisphere. Sleep research has determined that some brain regions fully active during waking are, during REM sleep, activated only in a partial or fragmentary way. Drawing on this knowledge, textbook author James W. Kalat explains, "[A] dream represents
9744-433: The night before flying (while awake), and that they would be as likely to miss their flight if they dreamt of their plane crashing the night before their flight as if there was an actual plane crash on the route they intended to take. Participants in the study were more likely to perceive dreams to be meaningful when the content of dreams was in accordance with their beliefs and desires while awake. They were more likely to view
9860-749: The night by the electric light bulb —invented in the late 19th century—and the widespread usage of newer timekeeping devices like watches. Electric lights created night shifts for traditionally daytime fields, like India's cotton industry, and created opportunities for working adults to attend night school . Before the widespread usage of artificial lighting, sleep was typically split into two major segments separated by about an hour of wakefulness. During this midnight period, people engaged in prayer, crimes, urination, sex, and, most commonly, reflection. Without exposure to artificial light, studies show that people revert to sleeping in two separate intervals. Diverse cultures have made connections between
9976-493: The night sky and the afterlife . Many Native American peoples have described the Milky Way as a path where the deceased travel as stars. The Lakota term for the Milky Way is Wanáǧi Thacháŋku , or "Spirit's Road". In Mayan mythology, the Milky Way's dark band is the Road of Xibalba , the path to the underworld . Unrelated cultures share a myth of a star-covered sky goddess who arches over the planet after sunset, like Citlālicue ,
10092-427: The night together this way. Some families took precautions to prevent unintended pregnancies , like sleeping in the same room, laying a large wooden board between the couple, or pulling a single stocking over both of their daughter's legs. Historian Roger Ekirch described pre-industrial night as a "sanctuary from ordinary existence." Artificial lighting expanded the scope of acceptable work and leisure after dark. In
10208-448: The night," including werewolves , witches , ghosts, and goblins , reflecting societal fears and anxieties. The introduction of artificial lighting extended daytime activities. Major European cities hung lanterns housing candles and oil lamps in the 1600s. Nineteenth-century gas and electric lights created unprecedented illumination. The range of socially acceptable leisure activities expanded, and various industries introduced
10324-412: The night. Its planetary wind system, driven by solar heat, reverses direction from day to night. Venus's winds flow from the equator to the poles on the day side and from the poles to the equator on the night side. On Mercury , the planet closest to the Sun, the temperature drops over 1,000 °F (538 °C) after nightfall. The day-night cycle is one consideration for planetary habitability or
10440-454: The other planets and moons in the solar system. The length of night is affected by the rotation period and orbital period of the celestial object. The lunar phases visible from Earth result from nightfall on the Moon . The Moon has longer nights than Earth, lasting about two weeks. This is half of the synodic lunar month , the time it takes the Moon to cycle through its phases. The Moon
10556-408: The other planets in the solar system, have a form of night. The length of night on Earth varies depending on the time of year. Longer nights occur in winter, with the winter solstice being the longest. Nights are shorter in the summer, with the summer solstice being the shortest. Earth orbits the Sun on an axis tilted 23.44 degrees. Nights are longer when a hemisphere is tilted away from
10672-486: The overall ecosystem because their larvae are a key food source for smaller fish. Dark-sky advocate Paul Bogard described the unnatural migration of night-flying insects from the unlit Nevada desert into Las Vegas as "like sparkling confetti floating in the beam's white column". Some nocturnal animals have developed other senses to compensate for limited light. Many snakes have a pit organ that senses infrared light and enables them to detect heat. Nocturnal mice possess
10788-500: The passive hearing of visitation dreams largely gave way to visualized narratives in which the dreamer becomes a character who actively participates. From the 1940s to 1985, Calvin S. Hall collected more than 50,000 dream reports at Western Reserve University . In 1966, Hall and Robert Van de Castle published The Content Analysis of Dreams , in which they outlined a coding system to study 1,000 dream reports from college students. Results indicated that participants from varying parts of
10904-500: The patterns in ecosystems and is especially harmful to night-flying insects. Historically, night has been a time of increased danger and insecurity. Many daytime social controls dissipated after sunset. Theft, fights, murders, taboo sexual activities, and accidental deaths all became more frequent due in part to reduced visibility. Cultures have personified night through deities associated with some or all of these aspects of nighttime. The folklore of many cultures contains "creatures of
11020-632: The person who experiences each dream, apparently based on previous cases. Some list different possible outcomes, based on occasions in which people experienced similar dreams with different results. The Greeks shared their beliefs with the Egyptians on how to interpret good and bad dreams, and the idea of incubating dreams. Morpheus , the Greek god of dreams, also sent warnings and prophecies to those who slept at shrines and temples. The earliest Greek beliefs about dreams were that their gods physically visited
11136-523: The plant, typically as starch granules . Plants use this stored energy at a steady rate, depleting their reserves almost right at dawn. Plants will adjust their rate of consumption to match the expected time until sunrise. This avoids prematurely running out of starch reserves, and it allows the plant to adjust for longer nights in the winter. If a plant is subjected to artificially early darkness, it will ration its energy consumption to last until dawn. Succulent plants , including cacti , have adapted to
11252-429: The pole itself, polar night lasts 179 days from September to March. Over a year, there is more daytime than nighttime because of the Sun's size and atmospheric refraction . The Sun is not a single point. Viewed from Earth, the Sun ranges in angular diameter from 31 to 33 arcminutes . When the center of the Sun falls level with the western horizon , half of the Sun will still be visible during sunset. Likewise, by
11368-442: The pollinators' sense of smell with strong perfumes to attract moths and foul-smelling odors to attract bats. Eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms that engage in photosynthesis are also affected by nightfall. Like plants, algae will switch to taking in oxygen and processing energy stored as starch. Cyanobacteria , also known as blue algae, switch from photosynthesis to nitrogen fixation after sunset, and they absorb DNA at
11484-434: The possibility of extraterrestrial life on distant exoplanets . In general, shorter nights result in a higher equilibrium temperature for the planet. On an Earth-like planet, longer day-night cycles may increase habitability up to a point. Computer models show that longer nights would affect Hadley circulation , resulting in a cooler, less cloudy planet. Once the rotation speed of a planet slows beyond 1/16 that of Earth,
11600-490: The restrictions via exceptions. Prayer and folk magic were more common by night. Amulets were hung to ward off nightmares, spells were cast against thievery, and pig hearts were hung in chimneys to block demons from traveling down them. The common phrase "good night" has been shortened from "God give you a good night." In Ottoman Istanbul , the royal palaces shifted to projecting nocturnal power through large parties lit by lanterns, candles, and fireworks . Though alcohol
11716-422: The rushing swiftness of a roaring elevated train sat numb. It was as if all the bogies and goblins that had beset her unloved, unloving, and unhappy childhood had come to life with tenfold power to hurt and frighten. Directly filming at night is rarely done. Film stocks and video cameras are much less sensitive to low light environments than the human eye. During the silent film era, night scenes were filmed during
11832-411: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Nightly . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nightly&oldid=1253694042 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
11948-430: The sensitivity to light, to take shorter exposure shots. This makes it possible to capture moving subjects without turning their movements into a blur. Dream A dream is a succession of images , ideas , emotions , and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep . Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5–20 minutes, although
12064-405: The sky after sunset and into twilight. There are multiple ways to define twilight, the gradual transition to and from darkness when the Sun is below the horizon. "Civil" twilight occurs when the Sun is between 0 and 6 degrees below the horizon. Nearby planets like Venus and bright stars like Sirius are visible during this period. "Nautical" twilight continues until the Sun is 12 degrees below
12180-519: The sleeper's eyelids were closed. Marcus Tullius Cicero , for his part, believed that all dreams are produced by thoughts and conversations a dreamer had during the preceding days. Cicero's Somnium Scipionis described a lengthy dream vision, which in turn was commented on by Macrobius in his Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis . Herodotus in his The Histories , writes "The visions that occur to us in dreams are, more often than not,
12296-936: The successful predictions than unsuccessful ones. Graphic artists, writers and filmmakers all have found dreams to offer a rich vein for creative expression. In the West, artists' depictions of dreams in Renaissance and Baroque art often were related to Biblical narrative. Especially preferred by visual artists were the Jacob's Ladder dream in Genesis and St. Joseph's dreams in the Gospel according to Matthew . Many later graphic artists have depicted dreams, including Japanese woodblock artist Hokusai (1760–1849) and Western European painters Rousseau (1844–1910), Picasso (1881–1973), and Dalí (1904–1989). In literature, dream frames were frequently used in medieval allegory to justify
12412-504: The things we have been concerned about during the day." The Dreaming is a common term within the animist creation narrative of indigenous Australians for a personal, or group, creation and for what may be understood as the "timeless time" of formative creation and perpetual creating. Some Indigenous American tribes and Mexican populations believe that dreams are a way of visiting and having contact with their ancestors . Some Native American tribes have used vision quests as
12528-466: The time of year and the latitude. Night on other celestial bodies is affected by their rotation and orbital periods . The planets Mercury and Venus have much longer nights than Earth. On Venus, night lasts 120 Earth days. The Moon 's rotation is tidally locked , rotating so that one of the sides of the moon always faces Earth. Nightfall across portions of the near side of the Moon results in lunar phases visible from Earth. Organisms respond to
12644-444: The time the center of the Sun rises to the eastern horizon, half of the Sun will already be visible during sunrise. This shortens night by about 3 minutes in temperate zones . Atmospheric refraction is a larger factor. Refraction bends sunlight over the horizon. On Earth, the Sun remains briefly visible after it has geometrically fallen below the horizon. This shortens night by about 6 minutes. Scattered, diffuse sunlight remains in
12760-462: The urban poor, prostitutes, and thieves benefited from the anonymity of darkness and frequently smashed the new lanterns. Gas lighting was invented in the 1800s. A gas mantle was over ten times brighter than an oil lamp. Gas lighting was associated with the creation of regular police forces. In England, police departments were tasked with maintaining the gas lights, which became known as "police lamps". Daytime routines were further pushed back into
12876-631: The work of demons. The idea of night as a dangerous, dark, or haunted time persists in modern urban legends like the vanishing hitchhiker . Many times in the night season, there have been certain spirits heard softly going or spitting or groaning, who being asked what they were have made answer that they were the souls of this or that man and that they now endure extreme torments. In folklore, nocturnal preternatural beings like goblins , fairies , werewolves , pucks , brownies , banshees , and boggarts have overlapping but non-synonymous definitions. The werewolf —and its francophone variations
12992-431: The world demonstrated similarity in their dream content. The only residue of antiquity's authoritative dream figure in the Hall and Van de Castle listing of dream characters is the inclusion of God in the category of prominent persons. Hall's complete dream reports were made publicly available in the mid-1990s by his protégé William Domhoff . More recent studies of dream reports, while providing more detail, continue to cite
13108-440: The year. The tropics have little difference in the length of day and night. At the 45th parallel, the longest winter night is roughly twice as long as the shortest summer night. Within the polar circles , night will last the full 24 hours of the winter solstice. The length of this polar night increases closer to the poles. Utqiagvik, Alaska , the northernmost point in the United States, experiences 65 days of polar night. At
13224-486: Was believed significantly more than theories of dreaming that attribute dream content to memory consolidation, problem-solving, or as a byproduct of unrelated brain activity. The same study found that people attribute more importance to dream content than to similar thought content that occurs while they are awake. Americans were more likely to report that they would intentionally miss their flight if they dreamt of their plane crashing than if they thought of their plane crashing
13340-532: Was forbidden for Muslims , after dark, Turkish Muslims went to the bars and taverns beyond the Muslim areas. The night has long been a time of increased sexual activity, especially in taboo forms such as premarital , extramarital , gay , and lesbian sex. In colonial New England courtship, young unmarried couples practiced bundling before marriage. The couples would lie down in the woman's bed, her family would wrap them tightly with blankets, and they would spend
13456-486: Was influenced by the Roman strix . The Romans described the strix as capable of changing between a beautiful woman and an owl-shaped monster. Common themes among these mythical nocturnal entities include hypersexuality , predation, shapeshifting , deception, mischief, and malice. Nightlife , sometimes referred to as "the night-time economy", is a range of entertainment available and generally more popular from
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