Timeline for What natural phenomenon could lead to greatly varying season lengths?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 12, 2019 at 20:30 | comment | added | Nosajimiki | The Romans, as many ancient civilizations, used the shadow length of sundials to tell very accurately where in the year they were. A variable star will not interfere with this if your planet is on a stable axis; so, they will still be able to track years even early on. Also, even in the long extreme seasons, there will still be normal seasonal variance using this model; so, they know when the shadow is short, they are at least in the warm part of the long winter which may still be a fact of great importance. | |
| Feb 12, 2019 at 19:59 | comment | added | Arkenstein XII | The Roman calendar was an observational lunar calendar that measured months and was unrelated to a seasonal or solar calendar. The Julian calendar was a form of solar calendar, and the Romans were aware that a year was ~365.25 days long, but they still had no idea whatsoever that that was the result of the Earth orbiting the Sun. They just noticed that the seasons were getting out of alignment when the calendar was only 365 days. Even earlier calendars assumed that the year was 360 days long simply because it was a nice, highly divisible number! | |
| Feb 12, 2019 at 19:48 | comment | added | L.Dutch♦ | @ArkensteinXII, leap year was introduced in the Julian calendar to account for the difference between the two definition of years. So the concept is present in our culture since at least the Roman civilization | |
| Feb 12, 2019 at 19:40 | comment | added | Arkenstein XII | Defining a year as one orbit of the host star is a relatively new concept. People in a medieval analogue are not going to be aware that their planet is orbiting their star. Pre-heliocentric civilisations defined their year as 'the passing of a full cycle of the seasons', so if the seasons are not directly associated with their astronomical year, their definition of a 'year' will be very different. | |
| Feb 12, 2019 at 18:28 | comment | added | John Dvorak | Ah, okay. That makes sense. Your daylight temperatures will be locked to the sun output and your nighttime temperatures to the length of day. | |
| Feb 12, 2019 at 18:27 | comment | added | thirtythreeforty | Sure, if the star did turn completely off suddenly. In Deepness, the star's output gradually declined over a few decades. | |
| Feb 12, 2019 at 18:26 | comment | added | John Dvorak | @thirtythreeforty it must be noted that such "slow decline" would take a couple of days or weeks max, depending on how cold is cold enough and how good of an insulator your atmosphere is. | |
| Feb 12, 2019 at 14:29 | comment | added | thirtythreeforty | See also Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, which has an extreme version of this with the OnOff star creating a cycle of a few hot years followed by a slow decline into a decades-long winter. | |
| Feb 12, 2019 at 9:59 | history | answered | L.Dutch♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |