This is a question right out of the Isaac Asimov short story
Nightfall, which I would highly recommend if you haven't read it, it's a sci-fi classic. The basic premise is that there's this civilization on a planet where night only falls once every 2,000 years, and that night is coming soon. It's a really cool story, but there's a logistical problem. Turns out, the star system Asimov imagined is inadequate. Night would fall every couple months, not every couple of millennia. Now, that's a lot of daylight, but hardly the stuff of existential dread like it is in the story.
So now the question is, can such a planet exist? Can an Earth-like planet exist where there is no true night? The answer is yes, but boy is it
complicated. The first thing you would need is a centrally-located black hole, and you just know you're in for a doozy when that's the first thing you need for a scenario to work. Now, there are a few options from here, but at minimum you'd need at least nine stars in the system, eight of which orbit in a ring around the black hole. It is fantastically complicated, and in order to get the rare night instead of no night, a couple of big moons to do some eclipsing are also necessary.
Okay, so there's a reason
Nightfall is science fiction, but hey, it's cool to think about trying to make that planet work. And the guy who did this has a
whole bunch of articles like it, where he tries to figure out how various planets from science fiction could be scientifically possible. So I know where I'm going to be wasting my time today.
