Why does Venus rotate in the wrong direction? Which planet rotates in the opposite direction? What is the name of a planet that rotates counterclockwise?

Earth and Venus are similar in size and mass. In addition, they revolve around the Sun in very similar orbits. The size of Venus is only 650 km smaller than the size of Earth. The mass of Venus is 81.5% of the mass of the Earth.

But that's where the similarities end. The atmosphere of Venus consists of 96.5% carbon dioxide (CO2), the temperature on the planet is absolutely unsuitable for flora and fauna, because it reaches 475 °C. There is also very high pressure on Venus, which will crush you if you suddenly want to walk on the surface of this planet.

2. Venus is so bright that it can create shadows.

Astronomers measure the brightness of objects in the night sky by their magnitude. Only the Sun and Moon are brighter than Venus. Its brightness can range between magnitudes -3.8 and -4.6, but what is clear is that it is always brighter than any of the brightest stars in the sky.

Venus can be so bright that it can actually cause shadows. Wait until it's a dark night when there's no moon in the sky and check it out for yourself.

3. The atmosphere of Venus is extremely hostile.

Although Venus is similar to Earth in size and mass, its atmosphere is unique in its own way. The mass of the atmosphere is 93 times greater than the mass of the Earth's atmosphere. If you suddenly found yourself on the surface of Venus, you would experience 92 times the pressure that you experience on Earth. This is the same as finding yourself almost a kilometer below the surface of the ocean.

And if pressure doesn't kill you, heat and toxic chemicals certainly will. Temperatures on Venus can reach 475° C. Thick clouds of sulfur dioxide on Venus create precipitation consisting of sulfuric acid. This is truly a hellish place...

4. Venus rotates in the opposite direction.

While a day on Earth takes only 24 hours, a day on Venus is equal to 243 of our Earth days. But what's even stranger is that Venus rotates in the opposite direction compared to the rest of the planets in the solar system. If you had a chance to look at the planets of the solar system from above, you would see that they all rotate counterclockwise. Except for Venus, which rotates clockwise.

5. Many missions have landed on the surface of Venus.

You probably thought that it would be impossible to land any apparatus on the surface of such a hellish world. And you are partially right. During the space race, the Soviet Union began a series of expeditions to the surface of Venus. But engineers underestimated how terrible the planet's atmosphere was.

The first spaceships were crushed when they entered the atmosphere of Venus. But finally, the robotic research space station Venera 8 became the first spacecraft to land on the surface of Venus and take and transmit images to Earth. Subsequent missions lasted longer and even returned the first color images of the surface of Venus.

6. People thought that Venus was covered with tropical forests.

Until the United States and the USSR began exploring Venus using spacecraft, no one really knew what was hiding under the planet’s thick clouds. Science fiction writers have described the planet's surface as a lush tropical jungle. The hellish temperatures and dense atmosphere surprised everyone.

7. Venus has no natural satellites.

Unlike, say, Earth, Venus has no natural satellites. Mars has two, and even Pluto has two. But not Venus.

8. Venus has phases.

Looking at Venus through a telescope, you can see that the planet is in one phase or another, like the Moon. When Venus is closest, it actually appears as a thin crescent moon. As Venus becomes fainter and more distant, you see a larger circle through the telescope.

9. There are several impact craters on the surface of Venus.

While the surfaces of Mercury, Mars and the Moon are littered with impact craters, the surface of Venus has relatively few craters. Experts believe that the surface of Venus is only five hundred million years old. Constant volcanism changes the surface, regularly covering any impact craters.

The retrograde movement of celestial bodies is one of the mysteries of the cosmos. Scientists have long known which planet rotates in the opposite direction in the solar system, but scientific debate about why it does this is still going on.

Planets of the Solar System. Credit: Origins.org

How does retrograde rotation occur?

If you look at our system “from above”, from the side of the conventional North Pole, you can see that all bodies move around the central body in one direction. In addition, they all rotate around their axes counterclockwise, but several bodies do this in the opposite direction.

Among them are Venus and Uranus, as well as Pluto, which recently lost its status as a planetary object, its natural moon Charon and the Neptunian satellite Triton. The rotation of these bodies is called retrograde.

At the same time, the direction of Venus’s torsion still coincides with that of the Earth, Mercury and others, but is perceived as inversely directed due to the fact that the planet is practically turned upside down.

There are at least 3 possible reasons why some objects spin retrograde:

• changes in the gravitational field of the planet itself and the effect of gravity of the astronomical bodies surrounding it;
• the influence of powerful solar tides;
• a sharp change in the direction of rotation as a result of collisions with other cosmic elements.

The direction of rotation of planets can be determined in several ways: they are observed through radio telescopes from Earth and from space observatories in orbit, and mathematical calculations are carried out.

Rotation axis tilt

The direction of rotation of the planets is indicated by the tilt of their axes. It is understood as the angle between the conventional line around which the celestial body’s own rotation occurs, and the perpendicular to the ecliptic - the plane along which the circumsolar orbit lies.

If this angle is in the range from -90 to +90°, the planet is considered to have a direct torsion, which coincides with the general direction of rotation of the vast majority of cosmic bodies.

When the angle is in the range of 90-270°, the rotation is retrograde.

The natural moons of planets orbiting the Sun have the same inclination.

Only they operate at a different angle - between the axis of rotation of the satellite and the plane intersecting its host planet along the equator.

What makes Venus spin differently?

Of all the atypically rotating bodies in our system, the second planet from the Sun has been studied the most.

One of the hypotheses explaining the reasons for its retrograde rotation states that at the moment of the formation of solar planetary bodies from a rotating disk of gas and dust, a clot of dust and energy from which Venus was to be born collided with the nascent Mercury, which is why it suddenly began to spin in the opposite direction to the rest of the protoplanets - clockwise.

Another theory suggests the following: the reason why Venus turns retrograde is because its atmosphere is too high and dense - it slows down the rotation, spinning the planet in the opposite direction.

Another interesting version says that the body was turned over by powerful gravitational tides and the resulting friction between the planetary mantle and core, provoked by the influence of the central star.

Perhaps the dense atmosphere causes Venus to rotate in the opposite direction. Credit: V-kosmose.com

The large tilt of Venus's axis, close to 180°, is an obstacle to the change of seasons on the planet - Summer always lasts here. The planet completes a full orbital revolution in 225 Earth days, and its daily rotation takes as long as 243 days. For this cosmic body, the sidereal day lasts longer than the solar year.

"Lying Planet"

If Venus’s axis tilt is 177° and it is “inverted,” then the seventh planet from the Sun with a similar parameter of 98° is called “lying.” “Uranus rotates lying down,” scientists say about it.

There is a peculiar change of seasons, each of which lasts 42 years. At the time of the solstice, winter or summer, one Uranian pole is directed towards the central luminary of our system, and a polar day is observed in the adjacent hemisphere. The opposite region of the celestial body is directed towards trans-Neptunian objects, and the polar night lasts near it.

At the equator at this time there is a rapid change between dark and light time of day. Uranus makes a complete revolution around the Sun in 84 years, and a revolution around its axis in a little more than 17 Earth hours.

Why is Pluto retrograde?

Scientists have reason to believe that Pluto is part of a massive object that disintegrated after an explosion, torn out for some reason from the depths of neighboring Neptune. The second fragment of this body, a larger one, remained in Neptunian orbit, turning into a natural satellite of the planet Triton.

Now he and a smaller piece, which received greater speed and flew away beyond the influence of the “Blue Giant”, becoming the independent dwarf planet Pluto - bodies rotating in one direction, retrograde with respect to their neighbors.

Pluto is the farthest former planet in the Solar System. Credit: NASA

A day here lasts almost 153 Earth hours, and in terms of the length of a year, this body is the record holder for the part of space we have studied - it is equal to 248 years on our planet.

I became interested in the topic of what rotates clockwise and what rotates counterclockwise. Very often you can find in the world many things based on vortices, spirals, twists that have a right spin of rotation, that is, twisted according to the gimlet rule, the right hand rule, and the left spin of rotation.

Spin is the intrinsic angular momentum of a particle. In order not to complicate the note with theory, it is better to see it once. The slow waltz element is a right spin turn.

For many years, there has been a debate among astronomers about the direction in which spiral galaxies rotate. Do they rotate, dragging spiral branches behind them, that is, twisting? Or do they rotate with the ends of the spiral branches forward, unwinding?

At present, however, it is becoming clear that observations confirm the hypothesis of TWISTING of the spiral arms during rotation. American physicist Michael Longo was able to confirm that most of the galaxies in the Universe are oriented to the right (right-hand spin), i.e. rotates clockwise when viewed from its north pole.

The solar system rotates counterclockwise: all planets, asteroids, and comets rotate in the same direction (counterclockwise when viewed from the north pole of the world). The Sun rotates around its axis counterclockwise when viewed from the north pole of the ecliptic. And the Earth (like all the planets of the solar system, except Venus and Uranus) rotates around its axis counterclockwise.

The mass of Uranus, sandwiched between the mass of Saturn and the mass of Neptune, under the influence of the rotational moment of Saturn's mass, received a clockwise rotation. Such an impact from Saturn could occur due to the fact that the mass of Saturn is 5.5 times the mass of Neptune.

Venus rotates in the opposite direction than almost all planets. The mass of the planet Earth spun the mass of the planet Venus, which received a clockwise rotation. Therefore, the daily rotation periods of the planets Earth and Venus should also be close to each other.

What else is spinning and spinning?

The snail's house spins clockwise from the center (that is, the rotation here occurs with a left spin turn, counterclockwise).

Tornadoes and hurricanes (winds centered in the cyclone region) blow counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and are subject to centripetal force, while winds centered in the anticyclone region blow clockwise and have centrifugal force. (In the Southern Hemisphere, everything is exactly the opposite.)

The DNA molecule is twisted into a right-handed double helix. This is because the backbone of the DNA double helix is ​​made entirely of right-handed deoxyribose sugar molecules. Interestingly, during cloning, some nucleic acids change the direction of twist of their helices from right to left. On the contrary, all amino acids are twisted counterclockwise, to the left.

Flocks of bats, flying out of caves, usually form a “right-handed” vortex. But in the caves near Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic) for some reason they are circling in a counterclockwise spiral...

One cat's tail spins clockwise when it sees sparrows (these are her favorite birds), and if they are not sparrows, but other birds, then it spins counterclockwise.

And if we take Humanity, then we see that all sporting events take place counterclockwise (auto racing, horse racing, running in a stadium, etc.) After some centuries, athletes noticed that it is much more convenient to run this way. Running counterclockwise across the stadium, the athlete takes a wider step with his right foot than he would with his left, since the range of motion of the right leg is several centimeters greater. In most armies of the world, turning in a circle is carried out through the left shoulder, that is, counterclockwise; church rituals; traffic on roads in most countries of the world, with the exception of Great Britain, Japan and some others; at school the letters “o”, “a”, “b”, etc. - from the first grade they are taught to write counterclockwise. Subsequently, the overwhelming majority of the adult population draws a circle and stirs the sugar in the mug with a spoon counterclockwise.

And what follows from all this? Question: Is it natural for humans to rotate counterclockwise?

As a conclusion: the Universe moves clockwise, but the solar system moves against it, the physical development of all living things goes clockwise, consciousness moves against it.

The galaxy is spinning By clockwise when viewed from its north pole, located in the constellation Coma Berenices.
The solar system rotates against clockwise: all planets, asteroids, comets rotate in the same direction (counterclockwise when viewed from the north celestial pole).
The sun rotates on its axis against clockwise movement when observed from the north pole of the ecliptic. And the Earth (like all the planets of the solar system, except Venus) rotates around its axis against clockwise.

Perhaps it is precisely this rotation of the Galaxy (clockwise) and the Solar system (counterclockwise) that is displayed on the eight-pointed swastika Kolovrat (right rays), inside of which there is another eight-pointed swastika Kolovrat (left rays). link

Travelers observed an interesting experience while crossing the equator. If you throw a match or a twig into a funnel filled with water, it will spin clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, and stand at the equator. link

According to the law of right-hand traffic adopted in our country, circular traffic goes counterclockwise. When two cars moving at high speeds meet each other, a counterclockwise rotating air vortex appears. And when there are a huge number of such pairs, these vortices can cause a tornado. link

The rotors of helicopters in different countries spin in different directions. That is, in some countries helicopters are made with a rotor rotating clockwise, and in others - counterclockwise. If you look at the helicopter from above, then:
in America, Germany and Italy the screw turns counterclockwise.
in Russia and France clockwise. link

Flocks of bats, flying out of caves, usually form a “right-handed” vortex. But in the caves near Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic) for some reason they are circling in a counterclockwise spiral... link

One cat's tail spins clockwise when it sees sparrows (these are her favorite birds), and if they are not sparrows, but other birds, then it spins counterclockwise. link

But the dog, before going out on business, will definitely spin counterclockwise. link

Spiral staircases in castles were twisted clockwise (if viewed from below, and if viewed from above, then counterclockwise) so that it would be inconvenient for attackers to attack when ascending. link

The DNA molecule is twisted into a right-handed double helix. This is because the backbone of the DNA double helix is ​​made entirely of right-handed deoxyribose sugar molecules. Interestingly, during cloning, some nucleic acids change the direction of twist of their helices from right to left. On the contrary, all amino acids are twisted counterclockwise, to the left.

The DNA helix also exists in space: in the Milky Way, scientists have discovered a nebula in the form of a DNA double helix. link

But the spirals of light bulbs manufactured in Russia are twisted to the left (unlike foreign ones, which are twisted in the same way as the DNA spiral, to the right). The question arises: isn’t this harmful?

From the school astronomy course, which is included in the geography lesson program, we all know about the existence of the solar system and its 8 planets. They “circle” around the Sun, but not everyone knows that there are celestial bodies with retrograde rotation. Which planet rotates in the opposite direction? In fact, there are several of them. These are Venus, Uranus and a recently discovered planet located on the far side of Neptune.

Retrograde rotation

The movement of each planet obeys the same order, and the solar wind, meteorites and asteroids, colliding with it, force it to rotate around its axis. However, gravity plays the main role in the movement of celestial bodies. Each of them has its own inclination of the axis and orbit, the change of which affects its rotation. Planets move counterclockwise with an orbital inclination angle of -90° to 90°, and celestial bodies with an angle of 90° to 180° are classified as bodies with retrograde rotation.

Axis tilt

As for the axis tilt, for retrograde ones this value is 90°-270°. For example, the axis tilt angle of Venus is 177.36°, which does not allow it to move counterclockwise, and the recently discovered space object Nika has an inclination angle of 110°. It should be noted that the effect of the mass of a celestial body on its rotation has not been fully studied.

Fixed Mercury

Along with retrograde ones, there is a planet in the solar system that practically does not rotate - this is Mercury, which has no satellites. Reverse rotation of planets is not such a rare phenomenon, but it is most often found outside the solar system. Today there is no generally accepted model of retrograde rotation, which makes it possible for young astronomers to make amazing discoveries.

Causes of retrograde rotation

There are several reasons why planets change their course of motion:

• collision with larger space objects
• change in orbital inclination angle
• change in axis tilt
• changes in the gravitational field (interference of asteroids, meteorites, space debris, etc.)

Also, the cause of retrograde rotation may be the orbit of another cosmic body. There is an opinion that the reason for Venus's retrograde motion could be solar tides, which slowed down its rotation.