Worldbuilding

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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

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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.

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[–] solivine 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

By binary planet system do you mean two planets or one planet circling two stars?

If it was tidally locked I don't think it would have days at all right? Since the same side will always be facing the stars in the center (Apparently not always true actually - check out tidal locking on Wikipedia). That means the main spot to inhabit, if any, would be near the division of light and dark.

[–] Noossablue 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Two planets tidally locked with each other, orbiting a single star. The days do end up being the same as their orbital period, but that's only going to be 6-8 days bc they're orbiting in such close proximity.

There's a lot of other fun effects of this, like very frequent eclipses and the other planet going through phases daily on one side of the planet while the other side has no direct interaction and feels much more like our planet.

[–] solivine 2 points 1 year ago

Woah that sounds a lot more complicated to explore! Best of luck with it 🙂