Troublesome Venus

As most people know, Venus is the planet closest to Earth, and second from the Sun. For thousands of years, people have looked at it in admiration and wonder. Like the moon, Venus goes through phases. Unlike the moon, Venus appears to have different sizes during its phases. Galileo documented this effect, which began the overthrow of the geocentric (the Earth is stationary and everything orbits it) systems of Ptolemy and Aristotle, and the establishment of the heliocentric (Earth orbits the Sun) system that we have today.

NASA/NSSDC Photo Gallery

From an evolutionary cosmology perspective, Venus is a very naughty girl, what with confusing scientists and all. Scientists thought that she was very similar to Earth, and called a "twin". Well, an evil twin. She rotates the wrong way, has a toxic atmosphere and is the hottest body (no, not that way, I mean literally hottest) in the solar system. Creationists are not bothered in the least by the contrary "behavior" of Venus.

Venus has the most circular orbit of any planet in the solar system. Its axial tilt is only three degrees, so there are no seasons on Venus. Since it orbits closer to the sun than Earth does, Venus orbits faster and completes a circuit every 7.4 months. But its day is much longer than Earth’s. Venus rotates once every eight months, so its day is actually longer than its year. This is the sidereal day—the rotation of Venus relative to the stars. What is even more intriguing is that Venus rotatesbackward. All eight planets orbit the sun counterclockwise, as viewed from the solar system’s North Pole. Most of the planets also rotate counterclockwise, but Venus is the exception. On Venus, the sun would rise in the west and set in the east—although it would be difficult to see the sun in such overcast skies.

Secularists do not have a good explanation for the backward rotation of Venus. In the secular scenario, the solar system is supposed to have formed from the collapse of a rotating nebula. The natural expectation of this would be that all planets would rotate in the same direction at about the same rate, and they would all have very little axial tilt. Venus is the worst offender to this concept, since it rotates exactly the opposite of what the evolutionary models require. But we expect such diversity in the biblical view.

The backward rotation of Venus causes its solar day to be much shorter than its sidereal day—a unique phenomenon in the solar system. Recall that the solar day is the average time from one sunrise to the next as viewed from a planet’s surface (e.g., 24 hours for Earth). This is different (and normally slightly longer) from the sidereal day because planets orbit the sun and not the stars. Since Venus rotates in the opposite direction, its solar day is reduced to 3.8 months. Strangely, this is shorter than Mercury’s solar day, even though Venus physically rotates slower than Mercury.

It should be your desire to read "The Solar System — Venus" in its full context.



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