{"id":7614,"date":"2026-09-24T20:49:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T20:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=7614"},"modified":"2026-09-24T20:49:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T20:49:28","slug":"venus-may-have-devoured-its-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=7614","title":{"rendered":"Venus May Have Devoured Its Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><span class=\"lead-in-text-callout\">Venus has nearly<\/span> the same mass, size, and structure as Earth, which has led astronomers to believe it should have a moon, but it doesn\u2019t. It is technically possible that a moon never formed, but scientists have also come up with several scenarios to describe how Venus could have lost its satellite.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">One previously presented hypothesis is that Venus\u2019 moon was destroyed by a collision with some massive celestial body. But <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/1538-4357\/ae9d6c\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/1538-4357\/ae9d6c&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/1538-4357\/ae9d6c\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a recent study<\/a> by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, suggests a different course of events. It posits that instead of being obliterated by some catastrophic external force, the moon was slowly pulled in by Venus\u2019 gravity and plodding rotation until it fragmented and was completely swallowed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cVenus didn\u2019t require a catastrophe to arrive at what we can see today,\u201d Steven Kane, an astrophysicist and the paper\u2019s lead author, explained in a <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/news.ucr.edu\/articles\/2026\/09\/14\/venus-ate-its-moon\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/news.ucr.edu\/articles\/2026\/09\/14\/venus-ate-its-moon&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/news.ucr.edu\/articles\/2026\/09\/14\/venus-ate-its-moon\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">press release<\/a>. \u201cIt turns out the gravity of the planet itself combined with the rate at which it spins naturally caused the moon to collapse on top of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">A planet\u2019s rotation can either push or pull on its satellites, depending on its speed. The rotation can cause variations in gravitational strength. This is why our moon isn\u2019t in any danger of being eaten. In fact\u2014because our 24-hour days are rather fast in a planetary sense\u2014our moon is currently drifting away from Earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches per year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">And when astronomers say Venus spins slowly, they really mean it. The time it takes for Venus to complete one rotation is 243 Earth days. That\u2019s longer than Venus\u2019 year and makes the bright planet the slowest spinner in our solar system. This protracted rotation, combined with the planet\u2019s gravity, means that even if a moon existed, it would not be pushed outward but would instead be dragged inward.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">To verify this mechanism, Kane and his research team built a computer model simulating gravitational interactions between celestial bodies. After verifying the model\u2019s accuracy by faithfully recreating the evolution of Earth\u2019s moon, they ran simulations varying several factors including the time it takes Venus to complete one rotation and the mass of a hypothetical moon, ranging anywhere from 0.01 to 10 times that of Earth\u2019s natural satellite.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The outcomes showed that the moon\u2019s fate depended on Venus\u2019 rotation speed, the lunar mass, and the shape of its orbit. Under many conditions, the satellite spiraled inward, eventually breaking apart and succumbing to the planet\u2019s gravity. \u201cWhen I made this discovery, I was shocked,\u201d Kane recalled. \u201cI thought surely the broad range of scenarios I was exploring would lead to a variety of results. But it all went pretty much in the same direction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">In a few instances\u2014such as when the researchers artificially sped up the planet\u2019s rotation to once every 10 to 12 hours and the moon had a mass comparable to that of Earth\u2019s\u2014the simulations indicated a moon could survive for up to 4.5 billion years. But that\u2019s little more than an interesting test of the model. It\u2019s an extremely unlikely reality given our planetary neighbor\u2019s current lethargic speed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">This study does not, however, prove that Venus once had a moon, and finding physical evidence of its existence will not be easy. Venus\u2019 surface is geologically young, the number of craters indicating that top layer of rock is just a few hundred million years old. The planet itself formed at the same time as the rest of our solar system, some 4.6 billion years ago, but extreme amounts of volcanic and tectonic activity have essentially remodeled the surface.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">If any evidence of a moon exists, it\u2019s been paved over and may lie deep underground. Seismological surveys penetrating far into the Earth have provided evidence of our moon\u2019s formation\u2014anomalous structures pointing to a massive impact. If similar measurements could be conducted on Venus, it\u2019s possible that traces of a moon that was once absorbed might be found.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/venus-may-have-devoured-its-moon\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Venus has nearly the same mass, size, and structure as Earth, which has led astronomers to believe it should have a moon, but it doesn\u2019t. It is technically possible that a moon never formed, but scientists have also come up with several scenarios to describe how Venus could have lost its satellite. One previously presented [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[307,839,1420,398,1109,1287],"class_list":["post-7614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-astronomy","tag-exoplanets","tag-extraterrestrial-life","tag-moon","tag-planets","tag-venus"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Venus May Have Devoured Its Moon - Silvybrand Lifestyle Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of the great mysteries in astronomy has been why Venus has no moon. 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