Effects on the visual systems of humans when temporarily having several stars illuminating the living space
A modern day Earth nation is at war with another. That other nation is extremely advanced but they are also pacifists. Instead of killing peoples their gun rounds and shells have the effect of wormholes and teleport peoples to a distant planet 2000 light-years away as prisoners of war. The prisoners are returned after the war.
The solar system that planet is on contains 3 stars. The orbits of those suns insures that nights doesn't exist on that planet.
Question: Assuming the biological living conditions of the planet are otherwise the same as Earth. Besides the effect of having no nights, would there be any long-lasting effects on the visual systems or psychology of Earth human beings of being in such a setting for several months?
To make it easier to answer the question the 3 stars consists of a far-out luminous red giant, a star like the sun, and a compact faint blue star . The question assumes the planet is in the habitable zone of all three stars and that the star aren't flaring more than the Sun or causing more radiations than on Earth. The illumination of the individual colors from each sun varies but the global illumination (mix of red, yellow and blue light) is about always the same.
TL,DR: Would humans beings from Earth be seriously injured or killed from the long period variation of the main color a bunch of stars projects on a planet?
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1 answer
TL,DR: TL,DR: Would humans beings from Earth be seriously injured or killed from the long period variation of the main color a bunch of stars projects on a planet?
My TL;DR: Yes.
Could such a scenario (referring to the planet being within the habitable zones of all three stars) exist? I'd think not. This arrangement would not be stable. Sure, multiple-star systems exist - and there have been systems discovered with up to 7 stars - but there's almost no way the planet could continue to be in the habitable zone of all three for more than a very short amount of time. In fact, I think it's likely that the system would consist of one star orbiting the other two, as is the case in Alpha Centauri.
But I guess I'll disregard that, although I think this is a valid point for the reality-check tag. I can elaborate on this if you want me to, but I can avoid it for now.
Back to the question:
TL,DR: Would humans beings from Earth be seriously injured or killed from the long period variation of the main color a bunch of stars projects on a planet?
I'll go with a sad yes here. It does depend on how far away from each of the stars the planet is, but I think that, given how large the stars are, that the output of radiation will be pretty huge. The Sun has a luminosity of 3.826 $\times$ 1024 Watts. Adding together the probable luminosities of these three stars, we get 518 solar luminosities (a red giant, e.g. Aldebaran) + 1 solar luminosity (a Sun-like star) + 91,000 solar luminosities (a blue star, e.g. Zeta Ophiuchi) $=$ 91,519 solar luminosities. That's pretty bright. It also means a lot of UV radiation, meaning that unless there's a thick ozone layer on the planet, these people are going to be pretty unhappy.
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