Study Suggests Venus May Have Swallowed Moon
Study Suggests Venus May Have Swallowed Moon
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A University of California, Riverside study suggests Venus may once have had a moon that was pulled gradually into the planet by tidal forces caused by Venus’s extremely slow rotation. Computer simulations of hypothetical satellites with varying masses found that they eventually spiraled inward and collided with Venus, potentially within the planet’s first billion years. The researchers say this offers an alternative to earlier explanations that Venus either never formed a moon or lost one in a massive external impact, though there is no direct evidence that Venus actually had a satellite. Venus rotates once every 243 Earth days, while Earth’s faster rotation causes its Moon to slowly move outward, highlighting how planetary spin can determine a moon’s fate.
Key Points
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The simulations were first validated by reproducing the Earth–Moon system before being applied to Venus, and they tested hypothetical moons ranging from half the mass of Earth’s Moon to ten times its mass.
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The modeled survival time depended on the satellite’s initial conditions, ranging from about 30 million years to 1.7 billion years; more massive moons spiraled inward faster because they exerted stronger tidal torque on Venus.
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Earth’s Moon is currently receding from Earth by roughly 4 centimetres per year, a movement measured using retroreflectors left on the lunar surface by Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969—an observational contrast to the inward migration predicted for a Venusian moon.
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NASA’s planned DAVINCI+ and VERITAS missions, expected in the late 2020s or early 2030s, are intended to investigate Venus’s atmosphere and geological features and could provide additional context for testing the planet’s evolutionary history.
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Reporting on the hypothesis stresses that Venus’s supposed moon remains unconfirmed: there is no identified study or direct observational evidence proving that Venus ever possessed a satellite, so the moon-consumption scenario should be treated as a possibility rather than an established history.
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