“Standing on the surface of Venus would be like standing at the bottom of a very hot ocean. “It’s incredibly alien, a wildly different experience than being on Earth,” Kane said. Slow rotation in turn has dramatic consequences for the sweltering Venusian climate, with average temperatures of up to 900 degrees Fahrenheit - hot enough to melt lead. Sequence of images from Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) in 171 wavelength of the Venus transit, merged together to show path of Venus across the sun. Extremely fast winds cause the atmosphere to drag along the surface of the planet as it circulates, slowing its rotation while also loosening the grip of the sun’s gravity. Venus takes 243 Earth days to rotate one time, but its atmosphere circulates the planet every four days. “Venus’ powerful atmosphere teaches us that it’s a much more integrated part of the planet that affects absolutely everything, even how fast the planet rotates.” “We think of the atmosphere as a thin, almost separate layer on top of a planet that has minimal interaction with the solid planet,” said Stephen Kane, UCR astrophysicist and lead paper author. These arguments, as well as descriptions of Venus as a partially tidally locked planet, were published today in a Nature Astronomy article. Because it prevents this locking, a UC Riverside scientist argues the atmosphere needs to be a more prominent factor in studies of Venus as well as other planets. The gravity of a large object in space can keep a smaller object from spinning, a phenomenon called tidal locking. Bright Venus seen near the crescent moon.
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