None of us are going to be around for the exploration of the entire universe, if it even happens with our species. There will always that "what if" floating around in the back of our heads. Creativity and imagination can gives us a little insight though. This thread is for developing your planet, super cluster, star, life forms, ecosystem, or anything you can wrap your mind around. Maybe a living planet that's composed of gas and later implodes causing particles to shoot out, creating life wherever they land. A species that lives on a planet that is inhospitable for 99 years / 100. It merges with it's surroundings and only pries itself lose that one year to repopulate. Hopefully this turns out interesting. It's a VERY broad subject with a virtually infinite amount of possibilities. Yes, I also know that humans have defined the way in which life needs to form... but we're not always right, are we? In the next hundred years we could find artificial ways to create life that completely debunk our current thinking. Never say never.
A planet the has an elliptical orbit, and it rotates on it's axis the opposite direction of it's orbit. One half of the orbit is slightly closer to the sun than the other half. The rotation being opposite of it's orbit causes the sun to come to a pause in the sky half-way through orbit, then begin to set in the opposite direction. When the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, it's summer because the planet is closer to it's star. When the sunset switches and sets in the East instead, that indicates the coming of winter. (Strongly inspired by Mercury) Edit: I'm having trouble figuring out if this actually works the way I'm thinking it does. Would love for someone to tell me haha.
It's going to depend on how fast the planet rotates. If it rotates more rapidly than the frequency of orbiting the sun, it wouldn't. We get one day every 24 hours. If we rotated in the opposite direction, we'd still get one day every 24 hours (well, very close to). The orbit around the sun would need to be of that order before the length of day would vary much.
