What if Days were Longer?

[AlexMcpherson79]

Okay, so its a headscratcher everytime star trek said "26 hours a day", not so much stargate atlantis as I think they mentioned that one of the two planets Atlantis was on during its run had a 26-hour day cycle...

anyway what if our planet earth suddenly experienced a slowdown in the rotation of the planet, resulting in there being 26 hours in a day... and a shift in the orbital period so there were still ATLEAST 365 days in a year...

Old values to new:

60 seconds per minute
60 minutes per hour
3,600 seconds per hour
24 hours per day < 26 hours per day = +2h
1,440 minutes per day < 1,560 minutes per day = +120m
86,400 seconds per day < 93,600 seconds per day = +7,200s
8,760 hours per year < 9,490 hours per year = +730h
525,600 minutes per year < 569,400 minutes per year = +43,800m
31,536,000 seconds per year < 34,164,000 seconds per year = +2,628,000s

31,536,000 seconds-per-year at 26 hour-days: 336.92307somethingsomething
34,164,000 seconds-per-year at 24 hour-days: 395.4166r


But Lets say for a moment, that the orbital period wasn't just shifted to that, what if it was shifted further, to give say... 500 days per year?

13,000 hours per year = +3,510 / +2,780
780,000 minutes per year = +210,600 / +166,800
46,800,000 minutes per year = +12,636,000 / 10,008,000

So, under a 24-hour day: that's 541.66r days. like a 48% increase.

So lets say, for star trek anyway, these were caused by... the spin and orbital speed slowing, but minimal to no actual change in the orbital distance (so not flung out of the goldilocks zone)... perhaps, Q did it. and no one thought much of it, or even it was a side effect of either VGR or the whale probe... and then suddenly we've got this former employee of a cetacean institute wondering "hang on, 26 hour days? 500 days a year... what the f?"

... suffice to say, I do believe that there would be increased need for a planet-wide weather control network... or worse, if it was VGR, the storms were so bad in san francisco not JUST because the Whale Probe was doing it, but a result of these things...

I like the idea it was Q trolling humanity for 'reasons'. Also, might explain the use of the 1,000-per-year Stardate system - with 1 stardate = 13 hours. (as it is, it's what, just slightly more than 8 hours?), and abcense of leap years...

Apply it to non-star trek too: All the crap that scifi-earth goes through and we DONT get a shift in planetary orbit or spin?

"The Day the Earth Slowed Down" or something.

[McAvoy]

DS9 had 26 hour days I think.

Your math is right but wrong.

26 hours to a day means the same as 24 hours to a day. Which means there is still 365.25 days to the year. One day is one planet rotation. One year is one planet ratation around the Sun.

To get 544 days would be the slowing of the rotation of Earth around the Sun. Hours in a day wouldn't matter.

It's one or the other unless you are talking about both.

[AlexMcpherson79]

... read the start of the post.

[Graham Kennedy]

Apparently Mars has a day that's 24 hours and 37 minutes long. One suggestion I saw was that a Mars colony ran on a standard 24 hour day, but they had a kind of "time out" at midnight. All clocks were designed to simply stop at midnight, for 37 minutes. It was treated as a kind of free time for everyone. I always thought that was rather nifty.

[Captain Seafort]

Apparently Mars has a day that's 24 hours and 37 minutes long. One suggestion I saw was that a Mars colony ran on a standard 24 hour day, but they had a kind of "time out" at midnight. All clocks were designed to simply stop at midnight, for 37 minutes. It was treated as a kind of free time for everyone. I always thought that was rather nifty.

37 minutes extra kip without having to hit the snooze button? As soon as we get a Mars colony set up, I'm moving there.

[Graham Kennedy]

Apparently Mars has a day that's 24 hours and 37 minutes long. One suggestion I saw was that a Mars colony ran on a standard 24 hour day, but they had a kind of "time out" at midnight. All clocks were designed to simply stop at midnight, for 37 minutes. It was treated as a kind of free time for everyone. I always thought that was rather nifty.

37 minutes extra kip without having to hit the snooze button? As soon as we get a Mars colony set up, I'm moving there.

Me too, though for me it's more that 1/3 gravity.

[McAvoy]

... read the start of the post.

Ahh yep. It's what I get for skimming.

I think was the lower part abouf saying '26 hour day, 500 day year' think that screwed me up.

26 hour day I don't think woukd be that big of a deal on the whole. How finicky those plant or insect life that truly relies on the 24 hour day is another story.

500 day year I think would seriously screw up alot of things specifically the ones that rely on the 365 day cycle.

Could also argue with the extra time during Spring, farmers would have extra time to grow more crops. Winters would be longer though.

[AlexMcpherson79]

Yeah. It was this or ask "what if the off-axis tilt that generates summer/winters was somehow removed? aka the planet's rotation was locked so that the sun always rose in the same place (in relation to any single point on earth) no matter time of year, instead of "summer, so it's over there, but winter its there *points in different direction" etc.

[00111010 01000100]

“Tidally locked” reference to the term of a planet/moon not rotating on any axis but still orbiting a solar body/planet. I read that earth’s rotation time is actually a product our moons gravity. In theory (cause no one was around to see it back then), the earth had a 14-15 hour day/rotation from day-to-night-to-day. When the moons gravity affected the earth (or smashed into it - thank you Theia!), the rotation was slowed to our current 24-25 hour day-night periods. Almost every biological cell in this planet seems to correspond to this awake/dormant cycle. So then hypothetically, if our planet’s rotation were to suddenly shift to a longer or shorter day-night cycle, we would adjust accordingly. Would be painful at first, much like adjusting to daylight savings, how many in the forums have that joy! It’s hard to adapt but after a time, we would get used to it.

[00111010 01000100]

Yeah. It was this or ask "what if the off-axis tilt that generates summer/winters was somehow removed? aka the planet's rotation was locked so that the sun always rose in the same place (in relation to any single point on earth) no matter time of year, instead of "summer, so it's over there, but winter its there *points in different direction" etc.

On the topic of seasonal patterns shifting... I’m a big fan of watching patterns and looking for subtle changes. Trend and analysis is the best troubleshooting tool for understanding environmental changes. The suns 11-year+22-year cycles, the weather patterns we see on earth. All are interesting to me. Some years, I wonder if our winter/spring seasons are shifting slightly or if it’s just a normal pattern change? If I look at the total amount of accurate data for the earth’s meteorological track record in comparison to how long this planet has had weather/atmospheric abilities... the scope of data is tiny! A few hundred years of weather data against 4.5-4.4 billion years... is such a small quantity of information to gauge what the patterns are or what to expect or even what’s normal? I know that earth has had not one, but two global freezing periods of what’s called “snowball earth”. The carbon dioxide levels during these times was through the roof (from ice core sampling) so to imagine what human factor changes can affect the weather are also hard to predict.

Anyway. Back to the topic, are the weather patterns capable of shifting around? I think so, it worth exploring the what-if?