A fascinating claim is circulating the internet: that there’s a moment each year when 99% of the world’s population gets sunlight. Is it true?
Our Day and Night World Map for July 8 at 11:15 UTC shows most of the world’s landmasses receiving sunlight.
It Happens on July 8 at 11:15 UTC
As July rolls around, our number crunchers thought it was worth fact-checking a July-related claim that has been making the rounds on the internet lately.
In the original post, Reddit user GiddySwine presents a still image of our Day and Night World Map, claiming that 99% of the world’s population is between dawn and dusk on July 8 at 11:15 UTC.
A more widely circulated version claims that 99% of the population gets daylight at that moment.
Covers the World’s Most Populated Areas
A brief look at our Day and Night World Map gives some initial support to the claims (see image above). Nearly all of the world’s most populated areas receive some sunlight at the time in question. Among them are North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and most of Asia.
Australia, New Zealand, parts of Southeast Asia, and Antarctica are the only larger landmasses on the night side of Earth.
7.7 Billion People Get Some Degree of Sunlight
When we run the detailed numbers through our computer, we also find some support for the claim.
Combining timeanddate’s Sun data with 2022 population data from the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, we found that it’s nighttime for just under 80 million people on July 8 at 11:15 UTC.
That leaves about 7.7 billion people—roughly 99% of us—on the side of the planet illuminated by the Sun.
Over 6.4 billion of them are in the daytime, while more than 1.2 billion people experience twilight.
