Venus spins backwards
Almost every planet in the solar system spins the same way. Venus is the stubborn exception.
Stand on Venus — somehow surviving the 465 °C heat — and you’d watch the Sun rise in the west and set in the east. Venus rotates in the opposite direction to Earth and almost every other planet, a motion astronomers call retrograde rotation.
It’s also in no hurry. A single Venusian day lasts about 243 Earth days, which is longer than its year of 225 days. The planet turns so slowly that its day outlasts its trip around the Sun.
The leading explanation is a colossal ancient impact, or the drag of its thick atmosphere, that flipped or slowed its spin over billions of years. Deep time is genuinely unhinged.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
