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99% Of World's Population To Experience Sunlight Simultaneously On Wednesday

Nearly 99 percent of the world's population is expected to experience sunlight or some form of twilight at the same time on Wednesday, in a rare annual astronomical phenomenon driven by the Earth's tilt and orbital position.

According to an explainer published by Al Jazeera, the event is expected to occur at about 11:10 GMT on July 8, when approximately 8.2 billion people across the globe will be in daylight or one of the twilight phases simultaneously.

The phenomenon occurs because the Northern Hemisphere is in summer, causing the Sun's illumination to cover the regions where the overwhelming majority of the world's population lives. As a result, only about 1 percent of humanity, roughly 83 million people will experience complete nighttime at that moment.

Experts explain that those outside full daylight will still be within civil, nautical or astronomical twilight, meaning the sky will retain varying degrees of natural light rather than complete darkness.

Although widely shared on social media, the event is not unique to a single day. Astronomical calculations indicate that similar moments occur within a period of several weeks each year around early July, with slight variations in timing.

The annual occurrence highlights how the Earth's axial tilt and the uneven distribution of the global population combine to create a brief moment when almost everyone on the planet shares some level of sunlight at the same time.