Odd living spaces in space

I started listening to some Astronomy podcasts again.  Lectures.  And there was one that was done by the Drake, of the Drake Equation.  You know the one that tells us how common life in the universe is.  He explained his equation in detail and updated it to the time he had the lecture which was 2005.  That is, to be clear 12 years ago.  How much things have changed in twelve years.  The number of exoplanets discovered 12 years ago was about thirty.  Today, according to my app, there are 3,313 exoplanets, confirmed.  He talked about how the Habitability zone of a star really does not mean anything, other than it is where we are.  He said that new ideas would tell us that if we had a runaway greenhouse effect we might have sustainable habitat far outside the habitability zone of a star.  

There was another lecture that I heard that told a different tale about how planets that orbited in the habitability zone of small M-Class red dwarfs might not be locked in a one side facing orbit of their star.  Mercury, is locked in a 1.5 resonance orbit of our sun, that is three days every two orbits.  This idea changes the present general idea of how a habitable planet around a M-Class star.  That is one side a baked desert, the other a vast glacier, the middle a temperate ring.  Sometimes the sun facing section is not as hot and dry, but the back side is sometimes so cold that oxygen rains and snows out of the atmosphere.  Perhaps vast glaciers moving to the rim that then melt and provide lakes and rivers that then evapourate dry as they move to the dry center.

The idea of a resonance means that there would never be an area that does not see the sun.  These worlds would have to be eccentric, and therefore they would get more energy closer to their sun and less further away.  In a 1.5 resonance, every one and a half days they would have greater energy and much less on the other.  This brings the imagination to bear about a world that oscillates between Winter and Summer every three days.  The amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, the amount of water on the surface would all affects this.  What if there was and axial tilt like we have on this planet?  Even more disparity, more differences.  I want to go and start up a spreadsheet program to look at what that might mean.  

Some of these planets have an orbital period of four to five days.  Think what that would mean.  For four Earth days and a 1.5 resonance orbit, the 'Day' would last 64 hours, 32hours of light and 32 of darkness.  A year would be 96 hours, so half a year 48 hours.  Summer and Winter, 48 hours apart.  The sun could rise in the Spring and set in the Fall, axial tilts aside.  The weather would be wild.  At noon, the air would be warm and the skies may be clear.  As the sun dips in the sky the air cools, condensation occurs and it rains, thunder and lightning, the weather cools lets more light in then the sun dips below the horizon and the air cools more.  A rain develops and it lasts all night long until the snow begins to blanket the ground.  The sun rises and the cold persists until the sun rises up for a several hours and the snow melts.  The water dries and the sun clears the air until the baking heat of noon.

Add wind.  The air rises under the sun and sinks at the opposite.  The wind moves along the ground towards the sunny-side.  Under the sun is a area of calm and on the opposite.  The strongest winds are at the dawn and dusk.  Latitude would have an effect, much like it would on this planet.  Jet streams, they might be more powerful though.  The winds would keep the dark-side more temperate, the day-side too.  Add water and everything mellows out more.  Add greenhouse gasses and the day and the night time temperatures come closer together more again.  

The biggest differences between our mild life on our planet and life on that close orbiting planet would be how life evolved there.  Would the plant analogies be resistant to freezing?  Would they be evergreens?  Would the animal analogies be able to operate all day long or would they work at dusk and dawn sleep on the day and nights?  Would they be semi hibernators, eat and sleep dawn through dusk then sleep at night?

What if the orbit was a lot more than a four day orbit?  What if the day was two thousand hours long?  The longer the period, the more extreme the day and night differences.  The further away from what sort of day we have on Earth and the more alien the life would have to be.  

I just thought of another wacky possible configuration for a star and planet.  What about planet stuck right in-between two M-Class stars.  As the stars orbit a common center, there is a planet at that point and it could be habitable.  No night just dusk and dawn and noon, morning and afternoon.  Would it spin? Would it need to?  What if it were a gas giant and it had a satellite that supported life?  It might be locked, one side facing the gas giant and the other gets dawn, morning, noon, afternoon and dusk, repeat.  Back to the earth like planet stuck at the common center of two stars, there could be planets closer to the other stars that could have life too.  The stars could be far enough apart that they only contribute half the energy that the planet would need to be habitable, half plus half equals a whole, and the other planets could also sustain life too. 

The geometry is exploding my mind!