imagine a world with two sun’s. Both about the same size as ours. You are on a planet orbiting both of them, luckily half way between the two so it never gets too close to either of them and far enough out so that it doesn’t get too overheated by twice our suns power.
Instead of winter the North and South poles of the planet get almost continuous sunlight. At the equator two shadows are cast at almost right angles to each other. There is no ice at the poles. In fact there seems to be almost permanent summer there. If the world has water perhaps plants continue to grow all year, like our tropics. The weather would be affected by heating from the suns and any magnetic fields may interact so I imagine a liquid iron core like ours would be an advantage.
I used to read old science fiction stories which imagined all sorts of life forms, crazy plants, strange animals based on different gravities. But I guess because of TV Sci fi we now think that all intelligent life will be bi-pedal with oddly shaped foreheads or ears….
There is an infinite universe out there but we are too parochial.
One of my favourite films is Galaxy Quest. It is a spoof sci-fi film based on the old TV cult classics. I wonder if we will ever move on from those ideas?
