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To: SunkenCiv; Monkey Face; sionnsar

Even given the suggested scenario, what’s curious is the strange fluctuation in rotational speeds.

Earth and Mars are almost identical in daily rotation, while Venus is retrograde, having a longer day than its year.

Mercury has a very slow rotation also. It is about two thirds tidally locked.

Now what suggests itself is that those planets inbound from the center of gravity of all four planets were affected by the accumulation of differential masses having orbital speed faster than the main mass, giving them “reverse english” in billiards parlance.

Possibly that could also explain Earth and Mars, but it would take some computational time on a super-computer. Or perhaps Earth lost quite a bit of rotational speed to its parking brake partner, the moon.

Now the next question: How do we form them into a Klemperer Rosette?


15 posted on 01/19/2009 4:43:09 PM PST by NicknamedBob (If you translate Pi into base 43 notation, it will contain this statement.)
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To: NicknamedBob
Ooh, interesting:
Klemperer Rosettes
Tidal transfer of momentum (from the planet to the Sun, and vice versa) would be greater for Mercury than for Venus, so its slow rotation should be slower than Venus, but we see it's the other way. They have similar densities (in order, Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars), with Mercury a much smaller mass, which suggests that Venus didn't originate in its current orbit, or that Mercury didn't, or both; could also mean (as an online friend pointed out to me) that Venus was walloped but good some while ago, and got turned over from that impact encounter. Mars and Earth have a similar length of day, but Mars' (24 hrs 37 minutes) might be expected to be a great deal slower at formation because of overall lower mass. All this assumes that the model of formation from an accretion disk around the Sun is pretty much correct.
16 posted on 01/19/2009 5:28:22 PM PST by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/____________________ Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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