Tidally Locked Perpetual Darkness

like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's I like the ided to mention that's an underwater prison. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it's wind so difficult to break out off. But now we are not talking about that wonderful film idea. What we are instead of talking about title locking in terms of the way our planets and the ware Moon's gravitate around other objects. Yeah, and how it actually affects the planets um and the stars and the moon's And if you think about the Moon and the Earth, for instance,

the moon is tidally locked to the Earth. We look into the night sky and we always see the same side of the moon, the same face, the same face of the moon and the Moon's backside is always facing away from us. Uh the dark side of the moon, if you will, even though it's not technically dark all the time because it gets sunlight as well, it's just we never see it. It's it's tidally locked to us, not to the Sun. If we were tidally locked to

the sun. Uh I, if an objects were titally locked to the Sun, it would be a different scenario where only one side of the planet would receive sunlight and the other side would be cast in perpetual darkness. Yeah, but for us, this is a very stable arrangement right right as having the moon tidally locked to us and the man the moon just bean that that same face that we see every night, and presumably his his hind

quarters on the other side. Yeah. The Moon, of course is rotating like it's It's important to note it's not that the moon is motionless up there, but it completes one rotation about its axis in the same time it takes to complete one orbit around the Earth. So it's

it's just lined up perfectly. It's there's a synchronicity and in the way these these worlds are moving and meanwhile we're just you know, turning to run our access going hey son and getting day and night right right, And the title inners it because the synchronization is caused by strong tidal forces from the Earth that effectively lock the moon's orientation. And it's really interesting to know that it wasn't always like this. The rotation has sort of set

in over time, which I think is pretty fascinating. That's right. The gravitational poll has has changed the rate of the speed, I should say, of our rotation. But this has happened over millions and millions and millions. Yea. And there of course other moons that have a similar situation going, and you see a lot with moons. If we look all the way to the edge of our solar system to the Planetoi Pluto, you'll find that it has a little moon called sharone Um or Sharon, however you want to

say it. My Dante teacher always such Sharon. Yeah, Salva Maria. If anyone anyone at Tense University of tennessee Knox Fall and wants a good Italian Dante teacher, h check up old Steal anyway, So Sharon's or a bit around Pluto takes six point for earth days and one Pluto rotation takes six point four earth days. What's interesting here is that sharone neither rises nor sets, but basically hovers over the same spot on Pluto's surface all the time. So

it's like a really extreme example of tidal locking. Yeah, and this again happens with moons, but it also is very common that it happens with stars as well, red dwarf stars most commonly. So a planet gets locked into or rather I should say, yes, the planet gets locked into the star's orientation, and that changes everything for the planet, right, because if you are just facing one side of the sun, you would never experience day and night like we do.

One side would constantly be in darkness while the other side would constantly be in light. There are various old folk tales where like they'll be like a maiden whose task with a job like she has to before the sun comes up, she has to finish knitting a scar for ori. Generally it's something a little more complex, like draining an entire pond with a straw or a spoon or something that sounds just like those old folk tales are. Yeah,

it's always some ridiculous task. And then like a good fairiy or something will come along and turn back the clock. In real life, there would be just catastrophic consequences because the cycle of night and day is vital to the way our weather works, but the way that the Earth as we experience it works. I mean you have one side, you have daylight regions heating up, you have night regions cooling down, you have airflow moving back and forth. I mean,

it's all part of the system. There's an article on house the work's called How Weather Works that I happen to write. But it is a good job of taking some of the very simple elements of night and day and using that as a starting point for understanding how global weather operates well and also how it affects every living organism. Right, And we take that for granted sometimes because of course the sun rises in the sunsets um

and we we live and die by this configuration. But you know, they're they're of at the other configurations going on in the universe. And the question is what does this look like? And if you did have this sort of configuration where it was only day only night on one half of the planet, would there be opportunities for life? Would organisms have a habitable area, and so that's what we're going to talk about a little bit more in depth. Um, you know, what, what does the weather look like? You know?

My mind immediately turned to science fiction, so I I was looking up to see what other examples I could think of that were sci fi related. If anyone out there knows of a good example of a tidally locked world in science fiction where they actually explore weather and some of the more realistic effects, I would love to hear about them, because the main examples would come to my mind, or things like there's the nineteen twelve novel The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, which I'm pretty

sure I've mentioned here before. This is the early post apocalyptic book that is so filled with this fantastic, wonderful ark ideas, but it's written so tiresomely, so badly, that it's you're just constantly sifting for these nuggets of gold amid just utter crap. It has its lovers, and I have kind of I have a very much of love

hate relationship with this book. But it takes place in a world where the sun is burned out and the remnants of humanity retreat into these massive geothermal powered pyramids, and they grow crop crops and subterranean chambers, and they're telepaths and they're spinning disc weapons all you know, monsters out in the dark and all. But what's really cool about it is that Hodgson's fiction was based on Lord

Kelvin's theories of the way gravity works. So the night land in the scenario this whole plant is the world again where the sun has going going dark and title Dragon slow the earth rotation to a crawl. He depicts this world is one where you have an entire just frozen night side of the world and then this dying side of the world that's facing a sun that's fading out. Another example that comes to mind is Jack of Shadows

by Roger zelaz Name. This is a pretty fabulous little novel that has a that has a lot of magic in it. So it's not really you know, like I say, he's not really concerned with weather patterns. But there's a side of that. It's a tidally locked world. There's a night world and then there's a day world. The day world is ruled by science and technology, in the night

world is ruled by magic. And you have a character who's from the night world and every time he dies in the daylight world, he's he's reborn on the far side and dreams. Yeah. Uh. And then and of course that we have to look at Star Trek. There are a few different planets that pop up there, but the most notable seems to be the planet Remus, which is

the third of four planets in the Romulan system. And you have a situation here where it's basically a mining world, and you have a race of individuals called the Riemans. It's playing on the whole Remus and Romulus. You know, the Riemans are either a separate species that evolve on the dark side of the planet, or they're sort of like the early Romulan setters who have devolved or evolved into nighttime species, so they look like kind of big

bat creatures. They've evolved to live in this dark portion of this tidally locked world. Well see, and that's what that's why our imagination can't help but go wild with this, because when you start to think about tidally locked world, you start to think about, you know, some sort of organism that may I'm not saying that they're there are bad people um. But but obviously there are adaptations that nature makes, and so you start to wonder what that

would look like. But before you can even start to look at that, you have to really start to think about what this planet would feel like, um, what sort of weather systems. Obviously, there would be no seasons, right. The only change in the amount of sunlight would come from the slight variation and distance from the Sun because of the like for instance, if if Earth were to become locked to the Sun UM because the Earth's orbit being slightly out of round. So if that were to

happen with the Earth, then you'd have slight variations. There might be different climate depending on how far away you are from the center of the side that always faces the sun UM. On the equator of the sun facing side, you'd have like these incredibly high temperatures, and in the center of land masses that are facing the sun, you'd have hot as haitise deserts. Right. And then by the coast, okay, there would be an incredible amount of thunderstorms because of

the rapid evaporation of water. So yes, their water could exist in some of these scenarios, and there have been tons of computer models that have told us there's an opportunity for atmosphere to die off, to completely evaporate, right, or it could sustain itself in this continuous cycle where if you have thunderstorms depositing weather systems of rain over to the dark side. I love to think of this

dark side is sort of a snow globe effect. You know that it's constantly you know, snowing over there or raining over there, and uh, and then again the cycle

just continues on. Yeah, and then like you said, there are other models of it that should there being very little person to station on the night side, because you end up with the substantial precipitation at the what it's called the subsolar point, the point where the sun is baking the earth the most though, like the dead on sun zone, and then you have net evaporation, and so you have all the the atmospheric water is transported from the night side of the day side. You eventually have

oceans just freezing on the other side of the world. Right. So it takes a little time because you also they're also those oceans are growing saltier due to the evaporation, and there you know, it's still a system of water that's very much and flows, so it takes longer for it to to freeze up. Yeah, and so you would

have all these different circles of climates. Basically, it wouldn't just be like, oh, this one half of of you know on Earth that had become locked to the Sun was completely hot boiling and the other half was frozen zero.

I mean, there would be variations in between. And that's the really exciting thing about whether or not um there would be habitable zones that could support life, right, And this is very much a question when we're looking at these exoplanets, because we're catching the planets in the habitable zone, but there's a little there's a certain amount of crossover between habitable zone planets and potentially tidally locked planets, especially when it comes to in the stars, which are stars

that are slightly bigger than the one that we call Sun. It would be one of those situations where you'd be like, all right, the planets in the right spot. It's in that Goldilocks zone where it's just the right size where it could conceivably have life. Oh, but it's not rotating. So it's kind of like the house looks great, but there's no power you know, it's uh, there's something drastically wrong here. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna get back to all this. So hanging

there for one sec. All right, we're back now. Astrobiologists think there might be some situations to where you would have a certain amount of what's called substellar weathering instability occur where basically you have higher temperatures that resulting in stronger rainfall, and those the rainfall is weathering away the soil, exposing more and more minerals, which then react with the chemicals in the air into a certain extent that could

be counteracted by volcanic activity on the planet. So there might be a situation where tidily locked world would be balanced out a bit and you would have this habitable zone on the world. Generally, it would be that that ring that sort of exists as a borderland between the night land and then in the dayland, right, Which is that That's the part that I just get so excited about because I think where there's there's the opportunity for

for life existing. And it kind of made me think about when we were talking about star dust though, about how difficult it is to build up life on a planet, and you just have you have to have the absolute

right conditions and the right building blocks. So I mean, you know, remember that life evolved on Earth for two billion years before it began to produce and use oxygen, for instance, and organisms used photosynthesis, which use carbon dioxide, and all those little guys produce little puffs of oxygen and over millions and millions of years, created more and more oxygen and what is now our atmosp fhere, right, So you know, we talked about this and we say

there could be habitable zones, but again, all these elements have to be just right, yeah, and the only model for life that we have is very much a rotating planet.

It's it is not tidally locked. So it becomes even more difficult to try imagine how that process might take place on a world where you have just a night world, a day world and then this potentially happenable twilight zone ringing around them right, right, and you'd have to have an atmosphere, right, So that's that's the first thing again though, there there's this opportunity to have the atmosphere, as you said, if you've got enough going on day and night side

that they sort of converge to have these habitable zones that could support um, you know, an atmosphere and keep it in. Yeah, and what's interesting to there's some models for tidally locked worlds where it's not it's not like a perfect tidal lock, where they'll be the two rotations don't completely line up, so they'll be like a little bit of wiggle room there. You could potentially have a world where there would be regions that would sort of have a little night and day going on in that

habitable ring. Well, and a lot of people have thought about this, particularly in terms of Earth, like whatever, Earth became totally locked to the Sun because Mercury, it's thought was once tinally locked. Um Radar observations of Mercury revealed that the planet rotates three times on its access for every two orbits yea. Early on, we actually thought it

was titlely locked like the n Yeah. The thing is, because of the planet's tiny size and the proximity to the Sun, it makes it a really good candidate for being tital a locked. So here's the thing though, They think that this this weird sort of rotation system that has going on is the result of a giant impact from the asteroid that knocked Mercury once it was totally locked um into what is now sort of odd rotation configuration. Yeah, it's got a massive hole in it called Rambat Crater,

which is about a seven and fifty kilometers wide. Would is pretty substantial for a planet that's under five thousand kilometers in size. Yeah, and they said that asteroid would have been about forty three miles wide and about fifty trillion metric tons in mass. So can you imagine this object hurling into Mercury tile a locked world and actually changing not just the spin but the but it even

being locked. Yeah, there's there's a theory that this planet size impact may have also had an effect on the density of the planet because it is an extremely dense world. And there are a number of theories as the wine that may be, but one of them is that this enormous impact may have knocked it round. Here's here's what I want to get to is that the what effs? Right? And I immediately start thinking how you've got this perpetual

night and my mind goes to cave fish. Yes, because kfish are a great example of something that has adapted to its environment. Cavefish are indigenous to Somalium, and they have been cut off from the sun for up to two point six million years and they lived in dark caves under the Smilean dessert for millions of years um. And then they had lost their eyes and scales and their coloring. And now researchers think that they're they're actually

losing their their internal body clocks. What is fascinating about that is that it's taken that long for their internal clocks to kind of get off a bit. Wow, So that's the pace in which these changes occur. Really, yeah, I mean, you know, the obviously their their physical changes occurred,

you know, much faster than that. So if you can imagine humans, if this were to happen to the Earth right for some reason, uh, you know, our eyes kind of scaling over with skin uh and then you know, our pigment changing, but still even two point six million years after the event, having some sort of pull towards this, you know, dining in old World even though you're in perpetual darkness because their entire evolutionary history hinges on it.

Even if we ended up becoming some sort of more lock or or like the creatures in the descent, you know, yeah, so I mean if you were sun deprived, can you can you imagine the sort of traditions and metaphors that would arise in language if you if you are sun starved and still dependent on it and yet you had adapted in some ways. Yeah, of course, there would be a lot of questions as to how you were obtaining food, and because as we've explored the the situation on the

dark side of the world would be pretty grim. I mean, there's no there's no light, so photosynthesis is coming to a close. Um, you have freezing temperatures, you have moisture being drawn to the other side of the world. So it's it's hard to imagine what life would consist of in that situation unless you you did have a scenario where individuals were somehow technologically sustained, or if there was some sort of trade situation with the with the daylit world.

But but things are gonna be pretty severe there too, so I guess it would be more like you would have to have some sort of trade scenario with the twilight world, like that's the that's the area where civilization is going to thrive more because you can have the baked side and the frozen side and only in the middle of things going to be just right right. And of course we're talking about you know, if this were to occur on the Earth, this is not something that

would happen like the next dayking about millions of millions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, but you know, I mean, you'd have life forms that could not subsist on the on the sunlit side, and by some versa, well you've seen what happens to say, like the neighborhoods in Atlanta when when there's a severe snowstorm like two weeks and it's full on cannibalism and road warriors in the street. Yeah, Atlanta would not farewell, Yeah, with this situation at all. But the heat side conscious

sign we could. We could probably roll with that pretty much what we do in the summer anymore. Yeah, you're right, right, I mean, actually like eight months of a year. Yeah, you hear us Florida, you hear us Alabama. All right, So tell us what you think about all that. Do you have any thoughts on a tidally locked world? You have some other great examples from science fiction you would like to do or fantasy you would like to share

with us. There is I mean, there's a whole wonderful sub genre of to see zi fi with the dying art scenario where you have the sun dying, and I think I did a blog post about that a while back. It's the fascinating zone of imagination. But I have not encountered much in the way of tidily locked world. So send me some examples. I would especially again love to

hear examples that take weather into account. Yeah, especially if if you've ever come across, uh, some sort of idea of an extra planet with half of the planet being a snow globe. Yeah, that's that's That's all I'm interested in, really, the snow globe part of it. Snow global girl. Yeah all right. Well, hey, if you want to share it with us, you can find us on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter. On Facebook, we are stuff to

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