Venus Moon Would Have Been Doomed From The Start, Says New Paper
A new study published in The Astrophysical Journal suggests that Venus likely never had a moon because tidal physics would have caused any satellite to spiral inward and be destroyed. Researchers used computer modeling to demonstrate that the Roche limit would have torn apart any moon formed in the planet's early history.
Why it matters
This research resolves a long-standing planetary science mystery, explaining the lack of a moon around Venus through natural physics rather than catastrophic events.
One of our solar system's biggest puzzles has long been why Venus has no moon. Often referred to as Earth's twin, Venus is almost the same mass and size as our own planet. But it does have an incredibly bizarre 243-day retrograde rotation.
In a new paper just being published by The Astrophysical Journal , longtime Venus researcher Stephen Kane, a planetary astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside and colleagues, show that a moon around Venus would have been doomed from the start.
The team’s modeling shows that in most plausible scenarios, any moon Venus once had would spiral inward and be torn apart by the planet’s own gravity. A scenario that would likely happen within the first billion years or so of the moon’s formation.
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