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 mean those two planets rotate around a common center while orbiting around a star? Wouldn’t they just have normal long days and nights as even though they face each other with the same side, they wouldn’t do it with their star?
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.
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.