Time is out of joint on Venus. The planet’s thick air, which spins much faster than the solid globe, may push against the flanks of mountains and change Venus’ rotation rate.
Computer simulations show that the thick Venusian atmosphere, whipping around the planet at 100 meters per second, exerts enough push against a mountain on one side and suction on the other side to speed the planet’s rotation rate by about two minutes each Venus day, according to a study in Nature Geoscience June 18.
That’s not much, considering that the planet rotates just once every 243 Earth days. By comparison, Venus’ atmosphere rotates about once every four Earth days. Precise measurements of the planet’s rotation rate have varied by about seven minutes, however. The push and pull of the air over the mountains could help explain the mismatch, with some other force — possibly the gravitational inMore detailed measurements of Venus’ rotation, possibly taken with a future lander (SN: 3/3/18, p. 14), could eventually help reveal details of Venus’ interior, such as the size of its core.
“Venus is the closest thing to Earth that we know of,” Navarro says, and yet its hot, thick, toxic atmosphere makes it utterly alien. “We’d like to know what’s inside.”fluence of the sun — slowing the planet’s spin back down.
(Source:https://www.sciencenews.org/article/venus-thick-atmosphere-speeds-planets-spin?tgt=nr )
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