Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In Mercury's case, the planet completes three rotations for every two revolutions around the Sun, a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance. In the special case where an orbit is nearly circular and the body's rotation axis is not significantly tilted, such as the Moon, tidal locking results in the same hemisphere of the revolving object constantly facing ...
One possible explanation for the braking is the interaction of the protostar's magnetic field with the stellar wind. In the case of the Solar System, when the planets' angular momenta are compared to the Sun's own, the Sun has less than 1% of its supposed angular momentum. In other words, the Sun has slowed down its spin while the planets have not.
Diagram of modern conception of the Counter-Earth, a planet in the same orbit as the Earth, but 180° out of phase. Philolaus's ideas were all eventually superseded by the modern realization that a spherical Earth rotating on its own axis was one of several spherical planets following the laws of gravity and revolving around a much larger Sun ...
All eight planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in the direction of the Sun's rotation, which is counterclockwise when viewed from above the Sun's north pole. Six of the planets also rotate about their axis in this same direction. The exceptions – the planets with retrograde rotation – are Venus and Uranus.
Another common form of resonance in the Solar System is spin–orbit resonance, where the rotation period (the time it takes the planet or moon to rotate once about its axis) has a simple numerical relationship with its orbital period. An example is the Moon, which is in a 1:1 spin–orbit resonance that keeps its far side away from
A solar wind event squashed the protective bubble around Uranus just before Voyager 2 flew by the planet in 1986, shifting how astronomers understood the mysterious world.
Phaeton (alternatively Phaethon / ˈ f eɪ. ə θ ən / or Phaëton / ˈ f eɪ. ə t ən /; from Ancient Greek: Φαέθων, romanized: Phaéthōn, pronounced [pʰa.é.tʰɔːn]) is a hypothetical planet hypothesized by the Titius–Bode law to have existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the destruction of which supposedly led to the formation of the asteroid belt (including the ...
Earth’s inner core, a red-hot ball of iron 1,800 miles below our feet, stopped spinning recently, and it may now be reversing directions, according to an analysis of seismic activity.