Norwegian Town Creates ‘Artificial Sun’ To Light Up Dark Winter Days

Rjukan is a small town located in Norway, but unlike many towns in this world Rjukan misses out on much of the years sunlight as for a large portion of the year their town is in the shadow of a mountain. The town is fed up, literally, of being stuck in the dim shade of a mountain, no sunshine and no brightness to their little town, so they’re going to divert the sun around the mountain!

Known as The Mirror Project, the town is set to create a 2,000 square foot circle in the town square that will be bathed in sunshine, they’ll create this using a system of three 300 square foot heliostatic mirrors that will reflect the light down into the valley. While it may only be a small part of the town, having a lit up town center will look amazing in comparison to the rest of the town, the hope is that it will become the happy center of the town and a great meeting place for the locals.

The system is in place and ready to rock, having cost the Town just under a million dollars to integrate the plan is that when the town is usually in perpetual darkness from September to March, they will now have a shining ray of light to keep their spirits high.

It’s a great use of a simple technology but one that could have a massive impact of peoples lives.

Thank you Inhabitat for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Mashable.