Does sun on MARS really rise from the WEST ?

Question

I got a forward e-mail and i am mentioning some part of it here. Please tell me weather or not it`s true !

The science of astronomy states that the speed of planet Mars
has been decreasing in its course toward the eastern direction in
the few past weeks to the level we notice the "waver" between the
east and the west.. and on Wednesday the 30th of July the planet
movement stopped going toward the eastern direction..
Then in the months of August and September...Mars changed its
course in the opposite direction to the West- and that until the
end of September..which means the sun will rise now from the east on Mars!! And this weird phenomena of the opposite movement is called "Retrograde Motion" Most scientists state that all the planets will go through the same once atleast and our planet Earth is one of them. Planet Earth will move in the opposite direction some day and the sun will rise from the west!

Now please tell me weather or not you have heard of such thing ?

Answer 1

Every morning on Mars, the Sun rises in the East, and every evening, it sinks to the West.
Someone got cunfused with they're information. MARS ITSELF
RISES AND SETS IN THE EARTH'S SKIES FROM THE WEST TO THE EAST.
The retrograde motion is what causes MARS to shift rise and set directions in OUR SKY.

For the Sun in the skies of Mars to rise and set in opposite horizons would mean that Mars suddenly came to a stop and started spinning backwards on it's axis.
Mars could only change its direction of planetary rotation if a planet larger than itself crashed into it with an unimaginable amount of force.
So no, that information is incorrect and Mars still rotates the same way around our sun.

Answer 2

This is just "apparent motion". If you were to trace the orbit of Mars and the Earth, the position of Mars *as seen from the Earth* will appear to shift direction from day to day as the Earth overtakes the slower moving planet. Rest assured that ON Mars, the sun still raises to the east. Shifting the direction of the spin of a whole planet would require huge amount of energy, like a planetary collision of something, and nothing like that has happened in this solar system since a Mars sized proto planet slammed into proto-Earth, and some of the debris collected to form the Moon, and the Earth gained its 23 degree tilt.
That happened about 4 billion years ago.

Answer 3

You have totally misunderstood what is going on. A planet's "retrograde motion" is the apparent motion an outer planet makes against the stars as viewed from Earth. Earth moves faster than Mars, and so Earth catches up with Mars and then races past, leaving Mars in the dust. We see this as "retrograde motion". It is analagous to a faster car catching up with a slower car and then passing said slower car. While passing, the other car looks as if it is going backwards, but of course it really isn't. This is what the Earth and Mars are doing. The people on Venus see the Earth going retrograde as well, but we certainly aren't going backwards just because we happen to be being passed up by Venus. We only seem to be going backwards when viewed against the stars from Venus. I hope this helps.