World with varyingly luminous sun

Consider a rogue planet, moving in a region of complete void absent any type of star (they all burned out). It is orbited by an artificial moon which shines and serves as the planet's sun. However, it cannot glow constantly, because the energy it gathers (through unknown means involving alternate dimensions, so basically it's free energy, but with limited bandwidth) is not sufficient.

So I thought about a cycle: the moon starts black and then begins to glow faintly (appearing as a full Moon on Earth) for a few hours. Then the glow rapidly increases (in about one hour) to the apparent luminosity of our Sun. It stays like this for a few hours. It turns off in about an hour, returning to the "moon" state. The entire cycle takes two lunar revolutions. Meanwhile, the planet rotates every 36 lunar revolutions.

The planet should be inhabited by a 20th century level civilization and rich fauna and flora. Could this system work? How should I tweak the details - like moon distance, maximum luminosity, and axis/orbit inclination - to optimize the presence of complex life?

Also, is there any software capable of simulating such a scene?

posted almost 7 years ago

Francesco Manzali‭

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