Scientists discover why a day on Venus is longer than a year From the first day of the war, Focus never stopped working. Our team considers it its duty to inform the reader about what is happening, to collect and analyze facts, to resist enemy propaganda. Today Focus needs your support to continue its mission. Thank you for being with us.
Venus, which is the second planet from the Sun, is the same size as our Earth. But this is a completely different planet. It has a very dense atmosphere, which consists of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid. The temperature on the surface of the planet rises to +475 degrees Celsius. But there is one more feature of Venus: it makes a complete revolution around the Sun in 225 Earth days, and it completes a complete revolution around its axis in 243 Earth days. This means that a day on Venus is longer than a year. American scientists believe they have found the cause, according to Space.
University of California scientists led by Stephen Caine have conducted a new study that suggests that Venus’s dense, windy atmosphere is the reason Venus’s year is shorter than the local day.
“Venus’s atmosphere is it is not a separate part of the planet that does not interact with its solid surface in any way. It affects everything on the planet, even its speed of rotation,” says Kane.
Scientists believe that without an atmosphere, the rotation of Venus around its axis would have the same speed as the rotation of the planet around the Sun. This phenomenon is known as synchronous rotation. Celestial bodies that have synchronous rotation are under the gravitational influence of a larger object. The rotation of a small object around its axis is synchronized with the rotation around a large cosmic body. And it turns out that one year at such a small object is equal to one day. In this case, an object with synchronous rotation always has only one side towards its larger neighbor. The most obvious example of such a phenomenon is our Moon.
According to Kane, it often takes millions of years for celestial bodies to have a synchronous rotation. To understand why Venus rotates so slowly on its axis, scientists studied how long it takes such a planet to have a synchronous rotation.
The data obtained showed that it would take 6.5 million years for Venus to become a celestial body with synchronous rotation. Compared to the age of the solar system, which is 4.5 billion years, this is a negligible amount of time.
“This means that there must be a good reason why the period of rotation around its axis of Venus has not yet coincided with the period of rotation of the planet around the Sun. I believe that the matter is in the atmosphere of Venus. Winds blow at very high speeds along the surface of the planet along as it rotates, and this slows down the speed of rotation of Venus around its axis, and also makes the gravitational pull of the Sun not so strong,” says Kane.
According to scientists, paradoxical as it may sound, but the Sun itself prevents Venus from gaining a synchronous rotation. The energy from the Sun makes Venus’s atmosphere more active and provides power for storm winds.
“The fact that we were able to find a connection between the atmosphere of Venus and its influence on the synchronous rotation of the planet can have far-reaching consequences. And not only for Venus,” says Kane.
New data can help scientists who are engaged in the discovery and study of exoplanets, because some of these planets may have the same characteristics , with regard to synchronous rotation.
“When studying exoplanets, researchers often use models of the behavior of planets in the solar system. Accordingly, if we now know more about why Venus did not achieve synchronous rotation, this can help in understanding interactions between distant planets and their stars in other star systems,” says Kane.
We remind you that a NASA scientist has developed a bold plan to colonize Venus. He proposes to build real flying cities on this planet. Focus has already written in detail about this project
Source: This news is originally published by thesaxon