World-building

[kengr]

I have this image of groups of people (tribes?) on an Earth-like world, but with *hugely* longer days.

They are always on the move, though they can stay maybe a week or so to hunt or harvest before they have to move on.

Probably two sets. The Sunrise people who are always advancing near the sunrise line and the Sunset people who are always heading towards the sunset.

This is going to require that there be a more or less continuous band of land around the planet at their latitude(s).

I'm not sure how bad mid-night and mid-day would be but almost certainly not easily survivable.

My current guestimate is that the day would be around 3 earth-years long.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Resources?

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Archipelagos of islands circling the world, and they use vast multi-hulled canoes like the Polynesians. A world like you are describing would have constant winds blowing from the day side to the night side.

Well, either that or prairie schooners and other sorts of land yachts.

[kengr]

Well, I was thinking more wagon train (or Mongolian wheeled yurts), but yeah an endless island chain might work as well.

Either way I see "villages" and maybe some sort of storage structures placed a week or so apart. As well as various food sources planted along the way.

Animals would either be migratory like the humans, or capable of digging in to survive the extremes of the day/night cycle. Though that'd be tricky given how *long* they'd need to do it for.

Plants are a problem too as they need to be able to handle a fair bit of heat and cold to survive until conditions are right again.

What grows in the hotter parts of the day is an interesting issue. As well as what grows after it cools down.

I expect the winds would go both directions, just at different levels. At least the Coriolis forces are much lower. That should limit the size of storm systems.

Big question is how far the temps swing over the course of the day cycle.

[siliconshaman]

Yeahhh... I'm not sure it'll work. Just five minutes work indicates the dayside temps exceed +300^oC with nightside temps dropping to -150^oC.

So, the atmosphere on one side would be super-heated steam and frozen out as 'snow' on the other, with hyper-hurricane scale winds in between.

You could get the same result, mostly, by having a normalish rotational period, but a slow orbital period (year) and an extreme axial tilt. You'd get a year or more of night, but without quite as bad temperature swings.

[kengr]

Drat. Guess it's back to the "D&D" during/after an ice age. :-)

One interesting thought that occurred to me prompted by a mention of the geological period on Earth when it "rained for a million years". That'd be a way to redo the old "Venus is a jungle where it always rains" stories.