calling the astrophysicists and planetary scientists of rain world
hi i'm a little bit fucking nuts, but i'm curious about this and hopefully someone on tumblr has an answer for me. tl;dr: i got myself into trying to figure out whether it was possible (following our laws of physics; if you want to reinvent physics, be my guest) for a planet to have a significantly shorter period of daytime as compared to nighttime on average, so something like a day-night cycle where daytime is 12 earth hours, while nighttime is 1 earth week. it doesn't have to be that extreme though, at minimum i just want to figure out if it's possible to have an uneven day-night length.
the reason this is relevant to rain world is because i'm trying to work with this idea as a possible explanation for why hibernation is called 'hibernation,' since having a night time this long, due to a whole host of issues like temperature outside, would force any life to take shelter until daylight returned. obviously not everything about rain world can be made applicable to our laws of physics; we don't have anything resembling void fluid, and that's. probably a good thing, but it means anything void fluid related, we can't really predict in terms of planetary science, so i've mostly been ignoring that.
going to add a cut here because the longer this post goes the more unhinged it's going to be. but if you don't want to read the rest of this, proposal for you: planet rain world is actually a moon of a bigger planet.
that crack theory is something i settled on because based on what i've looked at so far, it doesn't seem possible for a normal planet to have such a staggered day-night cycle? not unless it's tidally locked with its sun, sort of like what mercury has going on in our solar system, but tidal locking with the sun is probably not a great thing for life in any capacity, so that's not what i'm going with. the concept here is that due to planet rain world being a moon of a bigger planet, there is a portion of time it spends completely behind the bigger planet, thereby being completely blocked from receiving sunlight. i don't know if this idea alone is even possible; our own moon doesn't seem to be blocked from receiving sunlight by being behind earth, but our moon is also tidally locked with earth and it's god damn gigantic for a moon, so i don't know if it's a good point of comparison. i haven't got around to looking at jupiter or saturn's moons yet, especially io, but i ran out of steam before i got to that point, so i don't think it's happening.
this obviously gets into a lot of problems. how big is planet rain world and how big would the planet it's orbiting be? where are both of them in their solar system? how many other planets are in the solar system? what's the orbital path of both planetary objects? their rotational velocity? orbital velocity? axial tilt? geoactivity? among probably other questions that i can't even think of right now. there's also the factor of planet rain world very obviously having a moon of its own, which is theoretically possible (hence why i brought up io earlier), but we haven't found any planets with submoons yet. what i did find said that submoons are very likely to have unstable orbits that will result in either the bigger planet adopting the moon, or the submoon spiraling into the moon and crashing into it, and both of these scenarios probably did not happen with planet rain world (or... not yet? up to you i guess). there's also other concerns regarding planet habitability, stuff related to climate and atmosphere and evolution and what have you, but i'm not going to keep going here. point is, there's a lot of complicating factors, ones that i don't know how to contend with. i'm not an astrophysicist or a planetary scientist, i'm a biologist that's way out of their depth. the furthest i got was this:
this doubles as an image description, but there's a lot going on in this. the orange quarter circle in the bottom left is the solar system's sun. the blurple circle in the middle is the big planet, and the partially black circles on an elliptical path around it is planet rain world. the orange parts on it are a marker of the sunlight exposure they're getting, while the blurple parts are where the big planet blocks sunlight from reaching planet rain world. (if you actually bother drawing lines on the left side of the orbit, you'll see that the point where planet rain world is starting to loop back around to the starting position but is still partially blocked by the big planet is not, in fact, actually blocked by the big planet. i... drew this in medibang.) so obviously the half of planet rain world that faces the sun is going to get sunlight, except when it's behind the big planet, wherein it'll get no sunlight. the white dots on them are a marker for a particular position on the planet, showing how it's spinning counterclockwise as it orbits the big planet. it also completes one full revolution in only half of its orbital path, so it takes approximately two full revolutions to get sunlight again. the yellow ellipses and the dark yellow dots on them represent the moons of planet rain world, orbiting it quickly clockwise.
i know i am making so, so many assumptions here and i don't even know if this works at all. but i'm way out of my depth here and i gave it my best shot. the elliptical orbits are just... i'm pretty sure a circular orbit wouldn't give me what i'm trying to go for regarding daylight length? that's really the main reason, and also just. single planet systems are more likely to have planetary bodies that orbit elliptically, from what i've read. but that's about all i know. if anyone else knows more than i do and is interested in taking up this theory themself, feel free, and let me know if you ever figure something out, i would love to know as well. otherwise... dunno. consider the crack theory. if you want.
also because it's space, i made a version with a dark background and stars:
40 notes
·
View notes