Worldbuilding

1402 readers

1 users here now

Rules of !Worldbuilding:

See here for a longer, more explanatory version.

Rule 0: These are guidelines, not laws.
Rule 1: Be polite and respectful to others.
Rule 2: Provide some lore with your submissions!
Rule 3: Show some effort.
Rule 4: Do it yourself.
Rule 5: Advertising is limited.

Related Communities

For conlang (constructed languages) discussion check out [email protected] Feel free to discuss the your conlangs in our community, as well!

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

Impact of having much longer days on an earth-like planet (self.worldbuilding)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Noossablue to c/worldbuilding

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Basically title. I'm creating a binary planet system and am trying to figure out the impact that being tidally locked and having 6-8 day-long days would have.

I know gravity would be a bit less and the planet would be more spherical. I also know day and night temps would vary a lot more (kudos if someone can point me to how much), and there'd be a single-cell global circulation pattern. Plants would have to have evolved to survive darkness for longer periods. And obviously there are far-reaching implications for intelligent beings eg sleep cycle, etc.

Anything else I'm missing? Any detail anyone can add? Thanks a lot!

Edit: to clarify, I mean two planets orbiting each other and one star, not a binary star system.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Noossablue 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If they're tidally locked to each other, they'll rotate once everytime they make a full rotation around each other. Eg if the planets orbit each other in 6 earth days and a point starts by facing the sun, three days later they'll be facing away from the sun, and then another three days later they'll be back to facing the sun. Their day/night cycle is 6 days.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah okay but how long a day is would depend on their shared revolution. What probably could happen is that the outer face had longer day and night cycles and the inner face.