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ThymeIsTight t1_j3jwxhs wrote

I guess humans wouldn't be celebrating birthdays on Pluto.

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Numerous-Afternoon89 t1_j3jxbty wrote

Good point! Made me think of an interesting sci-fi concept, having civilizations of people that live their entire lifetime experiencing only one season on a planet

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tenehemia t1_j3kpkpf wrote

And we shall call this planet.. San Diego.

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PUfelix85 t1_j3lm81e wrote

It means "A Whale's Vagina."

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BigCommieMachine t1_j3ob3kk wrote

Objectively the best place in the United States

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tenehemia t1_j3ob9y0 wrote

I only spent a week there, but it was pretty great and I'm looking forward to a longer return trip.

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ThymeIsTight t1_j3jze71 wrote

Imagine how long the sporting seasons would be?

"During this NBA season, we've seen six generations of Jameseseseses: LeBron, Bronny, Bronson, Sonny, Akron, and DeBron."

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ImSickOfYouToo t1_j3luhxj wrote

It would be almost as long as a modern NBA season

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frickindeal t1_j3n1ono wrote

NASCAR ends on like Christmas Eve and starts back up early February.

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Anonymoushero111 t1_j3k3bnq wrote

this and other types of varied worldly patterns are pretty common in scifi books. you don't need to have a new idea though, its about telling the story in an interesting way!

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Delamoor t1_j3koq6w wrote

I also think it would be interesting to speculate on how sentient life would manage time on a tidally locked planet.

Without the sun rising and falling, there sure wouldn't be any circadian rhythms. Would there even be sleep? We aren't even entirely sure why it evolved here, so on a planet that never even experienced the sun's movement... Could be quite interesting.

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2giga2dweebish t1_j3kywyu wrote

>We aren't even entirely sure why it evolved here,

Baseless speculation but if sleep is a time for recuperation, could it just be that complex organisms need downtime to process energy, slow down for a while, etc.?

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waytosoon t1_j3lx60t wrote

This is my assumption. I think we would have to have some sort of resting time. It's interesting to look at how certain organisms have adapted to the regions of the world where there is not night/day cycle for extended periods. Cannabis Sativa, for instance, requires longer nights of about 12 hours in order for the plant to begin flowering. However, Cannabis Ruderalis, which was originally discovered in siberia, automatically flowers after around 30 days because as you can imagine, there is no break in light in the region for many months.

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Bsmith0799 t1_j3lnz3x wrote

People in Alaska sleep, don't they? And Alaska has areas where the sun doesnt rise and set the way we're used to. So I'm sure we'd sleep.

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Hikaru755 t1_j3lx1iy wrote

People haven't evolved sleep in Alaska, though. Sleep evolved waaaaayyy before humans even existed, let alone started living that close to the poles. And we've not been around for long enough for evolution to change anything about something so deeply integrated into the way our biology works as sleep.

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chairfairy t1_j3lslh1 wrote

Harder to guess because Alaskans still have circadian rhythms - that's a basic biological function built into your brain, that a lot of life on earth evolved with. (I assume circadian rhythm predates humans, because other animals have it, too.)

In a tidally locked world, there would be no circadian rhythm, at least not one driven by the day/night light cycle. I mean yeah they'd probably still need to sleep but the underlying biological mechanisms would be completely different

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mic_Ch t1_j3llnre wrote

We could all just migrate to the dark side each day

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tranbo t1_j3lpj6o wrote

I mean if you had 209 years of summer then winter you would probs learn to hibernate too.

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curiousmind111 t1_j3sfcqm wrote

Why is it called tidally locked?

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Delamoor t1_j3ud8i8 wrote

Long answer that I'll try to make short, but basically... Because tidal forces.

The tide on earth comes from the spinning, and the gravity from the moon interacting with the earth's spin. The ocean's water sloshes about relatively easily, but the tidal forces (the gravity) is actually affecting everything, all the crust and mantle. The entire planet actually flexes a tiny, tiny bit with each spin.

That flexing carries a cost; energy has to come from somewhere and it has to go somewhere. So the flexing turns into thermal energy; heat. Only very slight on earth, but still there.

Jupiter's moon Io is a giant pile of volcanoes because of this effect. It's super close to Jupiter and still spins pretty quickly and so flexes a huge amount, generates a lot of heat, so lots of magma flying about.

But that heat radiates into space slowly. Which over billions of years means the spinning planet loses energy. Which means it spins slower and slower.

Eventually it stops spinning and will always have the same face pointing towards the bigger object. Just like our moon does now. Eventually, far far in the future, the earth will also stop spinning (because of the tidal forces) and one side will always face the moon. That's why we believe the days were much shorter when the planet was still newly formed; it spun faster, but has lost roughly half it's spinning speed over the last 4.5 billion years. Because of the moon.

That has happened with a lot of moons in the solar system (because moons are small and don't have store much energy) and it can happen with planets too. Usually, the closer the little thing is to the big thing (e.g. moon near planet, or planet near star) the faster the energy comes out of it, the sooner it stops spinning.

And the thing that causes that to happen... Tidal forces. Same forces that create the tides on Earth. Thus; locked into place by tidal forces; tidally locked.

We're just fortunate that we have the oceans which slosh about so easily and obviously, otherwise it would have taken us a lot longer to figure it out.

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curiousmind111 t1_j3vd1my wrote

Interesting.

But what if we had no moon, and we didn’t spin - from the start. We just always had the same side facing the sun. That would have nothing to do with moons or tides. That’s why I was surprised to hear “tidal” in the comment. But. Googled and that’s what they call it.

Even stranger when there’s no water on the planet.

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Delamoor t1_j3vswa0 wrote

Interestingly, that wouldn't be physically possible.

The process of accretion in zero gee creates angular momentum by its nature: stuff slams into other stuff and that kinetic energy has to go somewhere, and it can't go any further towards or back away from the centre of gravity... so it goes sideways and turns into a spin.

That's why neutron stars generally rotate near the speed of light; all that matter came inwards with the force of a supernova, so supercharged the spin. Also why black holes spin and accretion disk form. You basically can't have a body of matter coalesce in space without it starting to spin at least a bit. Well, unless you're physically there to carefully place the matter bit by bit with near zero kinetic force, anyway.

If we had no moon then there would be no signficant drag (though there would still be a tiny, tiny, tiny bit from the sun and other bodies in the solar system, but barely noticeable even in astronomical timescales), and we would for all intent and purposes basically never stop or slow our spinning.

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curiousmind111 t1_j3yhf9l wrote

Nteresting. Even if we had water but no moon? I’m imaging that water adding Damone drag as we rotate. thanks for the Excellent answer!

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babyeyez t1_j3lmnss wrote

Game of thrones kinda of did this with the summer children only experiencing summer and did not know winter

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Carighan t1_j3kxn93 wrote

While it doesn't have specificially this, I was surprised how well the The long way to a small, angry planet-books explore alien cultures and concepts.

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dark_hypernova t1_j3lpyhj wrote

Reminds me of this joke in Secret Agent Clank where a planet is in perpetual New Year's celebration because it only takes a few minutes for the planet to orbit the sun completely.

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OJezu t1_j3l5pw9 wrote

Star Wars had single-biome planets, and no one bats an eye. Seasons on exoplanets are already an exotic idea in fiction. I believe the reason to be "don't think too hard about it".

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DresdenPI t1_j3lv75f wrote

There's a planet in Starfinder like that. It experiences 200 year winters and summers. The local flora and fauna have evolved to change completely between summer and winter forms.

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airplane001 t1_j3mqfdk wrote

Everything would probably be in interval of days. One Pluto day is 6.4 earth days

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Artanthos t1_j3mxyfx wrote

You could just as easily use an ark ship.

No planet, sun, or any other inherent measure of time. Only the cycles arbitrarily imposed by the ship.

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1mnotklevr t1_j3nfs2d wrote

Stargate SG1 "Brief Candle" episode where the humans age rapidly, and only live 100 days.

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Aldren t1_j3k3twj wrote

I'm ~6 months old on Pluto!

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DJDaddyD t1_j3kpitq wrote

Great-great grandpa get off reddit. This is no place for a 124 year old

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chairfairy t1_j3lsqk8 wrote

In 2 Earth years, America will be 1 Pluto year old

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arwinda t1_j3lg4x9 wrote

Can offer you a place there for your party. Guests must provide their own transportation.

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Magmasoar t1_j3lsog5 wrote

They'd come up with something surely... Maybe birthdays aren't a thing but I'm sure there's some way they'd make up to count time

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aeon100500 t1_j3lu5vn wrote

humans will probably always count it's age based on earths rotation. legacy habits never die

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fishbulbx t1_j3lsn9x wrote

You'd just invent or repurpose a cyclical event to use for celebrations. It isn't like weeks are based on any real natural event. Humans just needed a recurring time segment of about 7 days.

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I__Know__Stuff t1_j3m7j8m wrote

I'm pretty sure that weeks are derived from the phases of the moon.

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fishbulbx t1_j3m8vzg wrote

Ok fine, then hours.

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BLEUXJEE t1_j3n4thm wrote

Day and night divided into 12 as same relation between months and years.

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