Abundance of nilpotent orbits in real semisimple Lie algebras

We formulate and prove that there are "abundant" in nilpotent orbits in real semisimple Lie algebras, in the following sense. If S denotes the collection of hyperbolic elements corresponding the weighted Dynkin diagrams coming from nilpotent orbits, then S span the maximally expected space, namely, the (-1)-eigenspace of the longest Weyl group element. The result is used to the study of fundamental groups of non-Riemannian locally symmetric spaces.