Such tides, combined with friction between Venus's mantle and core, could have caused the flip in the first place. They propose instead that its rotation slowed to a standstill and then reversed direction. Taking into account the factors mentioned above, as well as tidal effects from other planets, the team concluded that Venus's axis could have shifted to a variety of positions throughout the planet's evolution.
Regardless of whether it flipped or not, it is bound to settle into one of four stable rotation statestwo in either direction. The researchers add that Venus would be more stable in one of the two retrograde rotational states.
So in essence, it was just a question of time before Venus started spinning the wrong way. Already a subscriber?
Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. Then, that may have provided the rest of the force necessary to get the whole planet going backwards. But there is no clear winner between these two hypotheses yet. According to a paper published in Nature, the axis-flip mechanism is most likely if Venus had a rapid initial rotation rate.
But if it rotated slower than once every four Earth days and had a relatively small tilt, like less than 70 degrees, then slowing down and reversing is the most probable mechanism.
Unfortunately, it is kind of hard to get evidence about Venus from four billion years ago. So until we build a time machine or at least some really good models, the jury is out. Of course, that is not the whole discussion, either. Because just to throw a wrench in things, that s impact hypothesis is actually making a comeback.
Or at least, a version of it. In , one researcher suggested that Venus may have gotten its weird spin back when it was a planetesimal. They argue that billions of years ago, another object about the same size slammed into it and sent it spinning like a backward top. But instead of destroying baby Venus, those two pieces came together to form a full-sized planet. And a huge impact could have provided the energy to get rid of it.
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