Our body’s natural rhythm and sleep cycle are inherently adapted around the light and dark formed by the Earth’s rotation on its axis. Part of the day we have energy and the other part we don’t. So, we sleep. Without researching past my current knowledge, I am going to assume that there have been several studies done to show that the human body needs sleep. That is an obvious conclusion without having to conduct studies. There have also been cruel studies done in which people are forced to stay up for several days back to back with some unpleasant results. It is unavoidable to neglect sleep and still maintain a healthy mental and physical state. But back to the first sentence: our body naturally aligns this wake and sleep cycle with the passing of light from the rotation of the Earth. But what if we lived on a planet of a different day cycle like Venus or Jupiter. Would we still have the natural sleep cycle that correlates with that planet’s day? I am going to guess Yes.
Taking this a bit farther, I wonder if a species of aliens are only advanced because they live on a planet in which their day is much longer than ours. Having a longer day would allow a species to accomplish much more in a shorter period of time. Thus, that is why they have developed technology that is much more advanced than human technology. But on the flip side, if a day is longer than so is the night. Would the alien body need to rest just as long or in proportion to the darkness of the planet? If we are assuming they can stay up longer it is probably safe to say that they will have to sleep longer too. And what if the day is much shorter like Jupiter's (~10 hours)? Would we only have enough energy for seven hours and have to sleep three?
There are so many possibilities and theories to discuss, but I think the most important takeaway from these thoughts is that we are possibly less than one hundred years away from having humans live on Mars. Luckily, Mars’ day is nearly the same as Earth’s. But if we keep moving farther out into space, we will have to consider if not being on a rotating planet will significantly affect our sleep cycle. Do we actually need several hours of sleep if our bodies become accustomed to a different lifestyle? I don’t know, but it is fun to think about. And also aliens.
Venus ( 1 day = 116 Earth days and 18 hours)
Image by WikiImages from Pixabay