Gregory's Server
@wonderofscience @Physicsj I hadn't realised the rotation periods of the Earth and Mars were so uncannily similar. Is there an underlying cause for this, or is it happenstance? I'd be less surprised if Earth and Venus had similar rotation periods, since they have similar mass!
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2 comments
@simon_brooke @wonderofscience @Physicsj I'm no expert, but it is not just mass. Closeness to the sun (close planets rotate slower) and possibly the existence of moons play a role. I also looked it up and apparently, no one knows exactly why Venus rotates so slowly (also compared to Mercury) and in the 'wrong' direction (the only one besides Uranus to rotate to the left instead of the right in the picture above). |
@simon_brooke @wonderofscience @Physicsj There are so many different random factors in even just one star system that you'll inevitability end up with a number of strange looking coincidences.
Though the biggest one is the Sun having 400 times the diameter of the moon and also being 400 times as far from Earth, making them look nearly identical in size.
Annular eclipses should be extremely rare in a galaxy, but we just happen to get one.