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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nifft" data-source="post: 5343471" data-attributes="member: 6562">I think you are assuming that the planet-moon orbital plane lies within the planet-sun orbital plane.Either way, though, "short cosmological" time is plenty for an intelligent species to evolve. Our own moon will fly away in "short cosmological" time, but that doesn't mean a heck of a lot to us brief candles.- - -Regarding weather: it's quite possible that you'll see local bands of convection rather than just a planet-long low-altitude "sunward" wind under a planet-long high-altitude "nightward" wind. Just like on Earth, you'll have counter-cycling winds in rings, but centered on the sun-pole rather than around the equator. According to that National Geographic video, there might be a giant storm system centered around the sun-pole. If so, that's a fine place to draw the first circle of convection bands.- - -Anyway, how do humans work on this world?- Savage day-side humans sleep every 6 hours (or so) for about 20 minutes. There is no dangerous night full of predators -- every day-lit minute is equally dangerous! They hunt in teams of four: hunt for three hours, then two nap while two guard.- Caves are their Stonehenge. Specifically, caves that face away from their sun -- especially near the twilight lands -- are how their mystics track stars, and thereby track time. People in the daylight jungle don't bother to keep track of time, they have enough on their hands just staying alive.- They are even more river-dependent than we were, since there may be no such thing as seasonal storms. Perhaps they are great canal-engineers.- However, mountains may be where civilization starts, rather than river deltas. Mountains may disrupt the weather patterns enough to generate regular rains, which allow terraced agriculture on the sunny side -- but they also offer a dark side which grants respite from the sun, and access to the stars.- - -Funky scifi S&S angle: imagine a giant solar mirror orbiting around L2. The night side would still be cold, but perhaps not freezing cold any more. The night side and twilight zone would have another timekeeping cycle aside from the stars. North Pole City might be the last bastion of lost technology before the colonists fell to savage barbarism.Cheers, -- N</blockquote>

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