Life on planet Earth has evolved for billions of years in the presence of light from the Sun.

Over recent decades, radical changes have taken place in the lighting of the built environment which have, for the first time in evolutionary history, removed the non-visible regions of the spectrum present in natural daylight. This absence, driven by the quest for the energy efficiency of lighting, is resulting in the disruption of human metabolism that may have health costs that far exceed the modest reductions of energy use for lighting that may have been achieved.

This talk examines the ways in which near-infrared light penetrates deep into living tissue where it allows the body’s metabolic systems to work at the level they have evolved to achieve.

Dr Robert (Bob) Fosbury is currently an emeritus astronomer at the European Southern Observatory and an honorary professor at the Institute of Ophthalmology at UCL.