has Venus ever flipped over? (so it's north pole became it's south pole)?

Question

I am not talking about it's elcetromagnetic field?

Answer 1

It did last Tuesday, weren't you watching?

Answer 2

Take a pencil into space and make it spin longitudinally anticlockwise. Because the pencil is not perfect it will soon begin to describe a cone at each end, wind down, and eventually it will spin laterally and still anticlockwise. It will do this forever.
Where Central Park is now, the ice was as high as the 'future' skyscrapers, changing the shape of the Earth. Could it have 'done a pencil' with the continents moving over the molten mass? Where the poles were would become part of the Equator. This could be repeated, still rotating anticlockwise but with the North Pole where the South Pole was. It would seem as though the magnetic pole had switched!
I can think of no way that a planet could begin to rotate clockwise.

Answer 3

As I'm sure someone else will confirm, Venus is effectively "upside down" owing to the fact that its polar inclination angle is 178 degrees. It therefore rotates as you look at it in reverse, so the Sun rises in the west and sets in the East.

By comparison the Earths polar axis is inclined with resepct to the plane of the Solar System by just 23.5 degrees which of course gives rise to our seasons.

The planet Uranus has a polar tilt of 98 degrees which means that its north pole is actually pointing more or less towards the Sun. Still pretty cold over there though!

Answer 4

Yes.
It was a slow process (so the word 'flip' may convey the wrong idea).

The evolution of the obliquity (the angle between the axis of rotation and the orbital plane) is caused by the tidal effects of the Sun and of the other planets (that is the outside force).

We (Earth) would have suffered the same thing but to a lesser extent than Venus. Tidal effects vary as the cube of the distance, so the Sun's tidal effect on Venus is 2.5 times that on Earth. However, our large Moon carries a lot of rotational inertia and has kept us from tilting any more than we have. The Moon's tidal effect on Earth is more than double that of the Sun.

The paper cited below explains how this happens. It is not written in simple terms but it is understandable if you take the time (and it shows that the topic has been studied).

---

Another paper shows how the effect can affect all of the "terrestrial" planets:
Laskar, J.L. and Robutel, P (Bureau des longitudes): The chaotic obliquity of the planets (nature 361, pp.608-612, 18 February 1993)

Answer 5

basically like the dude above me mentioned. The magnetic field of the earth wanders around grid north that's why good maps tutor a magnetic declination relative to grid or map north. The magnetic poles turn each and every so regularly (geologic time). The exciting factor of that's that, the magnetic oscillation is what brought about well-known acceptance of plate tectonic theory.

Answer 6

I cannot tell you if Venus has ever flipped over, but I would assume that it would be highly unlikely. What I can tell you is that it is (obviously) a rotating body. Any rotating body exhibits a phenomenon called precession. Basically precession is when the axis of rotation changes over time. If you think of earth with a big stick through it's axis of rotation, over time this stick will sweep out a conical shape. It's hard to describe so I suggest that you check out the Wikipedia page about precession.

The reason that I assume that it would be highly unlikely is that this precession phenomenon is the only major influence of it's axis. Since there is no energy being added to the system, I would be inclined to assume that the system is relatively stable. Precession is very gradual and is not a violent enough event to cause it to undergo such a massive reorientation. I hope that helps!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession

Answer 7

Well, unless something hit it, the answer would be no... I'm not sure we could detect now if something made it do that long in the past. But a planet won't suddenly flip over unless there's a force (from outside or inside).

Answer 8

The whole planet? I wouldnt have thought so somthing with the force to cause an event of that magnitude would of most likley destroyed the plannet
But who knows i'm sure some solar boff will come along and let you know...

Answer 9

sorta

Venus' rotation is in resonance with the Sun, so I kinda spins backwards.

its year is like 224 earth days long, but its day is -243 earth days.

Venus doesn't have much of a magnetic field... Earth is kinda unique in that way.

Answer 10

It would be hard to tell because it is engulfed in cloud cover. If you are talking "magnetic" north and south, then yes it has. So has the Earth. In fact, we are close to flipping again in the next hundred years or so.

Answer 11

I think that's supposed to happen in 2012 isn't it???