How to create a sunny atmosphere without an actual sun?
I have a large underground fantasy world which is only accessible through the Mariana Trench. I'd like to do a day/night cycle and have have a bright, sunny atmosphere part of the time, but I'm not sure how to get that much light since the "sky" is solid rock and deep underwater, and very high up from the bottom of the realm.
I'm thinking some sort of bioluminescent bacteria/algae, or light-refracting crystal, but I don't know if that would work. The waterways are full of bioluminescent plankton, and a lot of plants and animals have at least a little bioluminescence, so whatever is in the ceiling would have help, but that alone wouldn't illuminate it as much as I need.
This is a fantasy world, so things like electric lightbulbs and such aren't a possibility.
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How to create a sunny atmosphere without an actual sun?
What you have is one continent sized sheet of the Earth's crust being forced under extreme pressure beneath another incredibly massive sheet of rock.
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Like a balloon's surface being stroked with fur, but a billion times more powerful, electrical charges build up. On the surface they're known as Earthquake Lights when they discharge. Some static in nature, some piezoelectric, and here they are of such magnitude and over such an area more than all the power stations on the surface could generate, and they are buzzing for release.
With the pulse of nature's clock, this charge arcs across the gaps between subterranean mountains, filling natural reservoirs of copper and rare elements with its charge, and thin seams steadily conduct this charge to your caverns and phosphors in the roof eat-up this free energy, spitting it out in a thread, a stream of light upon your world through electroluminescence. Until the charge is exhausted and darkness falls - until nature's clock again proclaims its time, and the great charge breaks through with a rock-muffled thunderclap to bring day's light once again.
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