Venus Day Longer Than Year – A recent study indicates that Venus’ lengthy day is due to its dense and turbulent atmosphere. The planet, similar in size to Earth, has an orbit that is two-thirds the distance between our planet and the sun.
Its thick and hazardous atmosphere, composed of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid, leads to a severe greenhouse effect, resulting in surface temperatures of up to 900 degrees Fahrenheit (475 degrees Celsius).
Venus Day Longer Than Year
Additionally, Venus’ orbit around the sun takes 225 Earth days, while its rotation on its axis takes 243 Earth days, making a Venusian year shorter than a day.
Astrophysicist Stephen Kane’s new research from the University of California proposes that the planet’s dense and stormy atmosphere may be the culprit.
This is how we commonly perceive it: A day is the duration between two sunrises or sunsets, which are caused by the planet’s rotation.
However, Venus is an unusual planet; it rotates very slowly, with one rotation taking 243 days, longer than a Venus year (224.7 days).
This is why we say a Venus day longer than year. But the story doesn’t end there. Is a Venus day truly longer than a year in the conventional sense? The answer is no because one sunrise or sunset does not exactly align with one rotation. If Venus didn’t rotate at all, its day would be the same as a year.
Why is Venus Day Longer Than Year
In a hypothetical scenario where there is precisely one rotation per orbit, like the Moon’s synchronous rotation with Earth, Venusians would never witness a sunset; the sun would appear to remain suspended in the sky indefinitely, making a day last forever.
Adding to the peculiarity, Venus not only rotates slowly but also in a backward direction compared to its orbit. Consequently, a Venus day from the sun’s perspective is 116.75 days.
Its daytime lasts for half of this duration: 58.38 days, with the same length for nighttime. However, as Robert Newton has explained in detail, Venusians cannot observe any sunrises or sunsets because the sunlight is perpetually diffused by the thick, acidic clouds in the atmosphere.
However, Venus’ robust atmosphere demonstrates that it is a deeply integrated component of the planet, influencing all aspects, including its rotational speed.
Kane proposes that Venus’s rotation would speed up to match its orbit around the sun if it were not for the atmosphere, a phenomenon called tidal locking.
Tidally locked celestial bodies are influenced by the gravity of a larger body, which keeps the smaller body’s rotational period in sync with its orbit around the larger body.
As a result, the smaller body consistently faces its larger neighbor from the same side. This process occurs over millions of years, and Kane calculated that it should have taken Venus approximately 6.5 million years to become tidally locked.
Venus Day Longer Than Year
However, Venus’s rotation has not yet synchronized with its orbit, and Kane attributes this to the planet’s atmosphere.
According to Kane, the fast winds on Venus cause the atmosphere to slow the planet’s rotation while also weakening the sun’s gravitational pull.
When examining exoplanets, it is important to differentiate between Earth-like and Venus-like planets and to comprehend the potential impact of the atmosphere and rotation rate on these planets, as emphasized by Kane.
Kane also highlights that current exoplanet hunting methods are indirect and involve inferring the existence of planets from their effects on stars, rather than directly observing them. These inferences are based on models derived from studying planets within our solar system.
Gaining a better understanding of near tidally locked planets, like Venus, can provide valuable insights for researchers exploring the potential habitability of planets in other star systems.
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