Chapter 1 of Nature, Addresses and Lectures contains a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson that magazine editor John W. Campbell requested Isaac Asimov to use as the basis for a fiction.
How would people believe, worship, and keep the memory of the city of God alive for many generations if the stars appeared just once every thousand years?
Campbell believed that instead, mankind would go insane.
Asimov’s novella Nightfall is set on the planet Lagash in a solar system with six suns. Lagash typically doesn’t have nights and doesn’t see stars because there are so many suns there. The population is raised believing that their solar system is the cosmos and that they are its centre. But every 2049 years, the suns align and have an eclipse, creating a fleeting night. And the populace actually goes insane, wiping out civilisation and reverting it to the Stone Age.
Under a Constantly Flaming Sky
It is likely that creatures that develop in such a system won’t have good night vision. However, caverns would still be there, making gloomy areas possible. How frightful would those be for creatures without night vision, though? Some dimness might be present on cloudy days, but not a nighttime level of darkness. Additionally, even overcast days would often be brighter than a cloudy day on Earth if there were several suns in the sky.
How should we interpret the complex dance performed by the suns in the sky? Some suns travel quickly across the sky, while others move more slowly. Some suns go below the horizon while others appear above it. How two suns appear to merge or embrace often (if they are roughly the same apparent size) if they are binary and circle around one another. And how the number of suns varies in the sky—sometimes there is just one! What would most likely develop is a complicated mythology.
The following day after that night comes. Even though the night would probably be brief, is it difficult to envision how a caveman race might panic when they looked to their leaders—if they had any—to provide an explanation for what was occurring but received none? What does this mean? Would people kindle as many fires as they can to dispel the unheard-of darkness that is engulfing the world, as in Asimov’s scenario, as primitive humans pounded on drums or fired arrows at the Moon during an eclipse?
Could they see the stars, though? They cannot see well at night. Would they believe their suns were evaporating and now little if they saw the stars? Or that the stars were minute embers from a fire, similar to those that float in the air, from the now-extinct flames of their suns? If you’re interested in learning more about the strange realities that could exist in that vast area of space, you should read or reread Nightfall.
But is such a system possible?
A planet called 30 Ari has been found by scientists in a system of four stars. Later, more on that.
