Why is a day on Venus longer than a year? The atmosphere may be to blame.

Nov 10, 2020
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This is really a fascinating subject I remember wondering about this back when I was working on a term paper related to Venus it is easy to forget that tidal effects are a function of mass of the influencing body divided by the distance cubed. This means that the effects of tides dramatically drop off with distance far more than gravity itself.
Today solar tides are on average about a third the strength of lunar tides given a separation of 1 AU on average(by definition).

The atmospheric counterbalancing effects of solar heating are a very interesting complication to the normal thoughts of tidal effects on a solid body as Venus atmosphere is far more significant compared to Earth. Given the distances of any so called habitable zone planets around M or K type stars in addition to the inner range of G type stars "habitable zone or planets which much more substantial atmospheres i.e. Hycean worlds.
 

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