JUL 30, 2018

Why Does Venus Spin In The Wrong Direction?

WRITTEN BY: Nouran Amin

Scientists first discovered planet Venus as an inferno of acid rain. But, most uniquely, it was a planet that spins backward. In astronomy, backward spinning is referred to as retrograde rotation.

It is known that planets rotate on their axes the same way they orbit except for two planets Venus and Uranus. Now, it’s been 50 years and scientists are still wondering why Venus spins backward.

However, there are some hypotheses as to why this happened. One of the earliest of these hypotheses explains that Venus might have been slammed in intensity by an asteroid that reversed it’s spinning in the wrong direction.