Abstract
By considering the torque of the bodily tides, the effect of the core-mantle viscous coupling and the torque of the atmospheric tides have been obtained by numerical calculation: the evolution of the spin angular velocity Ω♀ and the obliquity β of the Venus are calculated numerically with the step-variable Runge-Kutta method of 7th order; and 7 sets of the probable Cytherean spin evolution have been obtained. It is indicated that the present spin state of Venus is the result of long-term evolution within the reasonable ranges of some disposable parameters. The early spin period is between 7 h to 2 d and the corresponding obliquity is about 90 ° ~ 100 °. The effects of the torques of body and atmospheric tides and the core-mantle viscous coupling of Venus on its spin angular velocity could nearly cancel out each other about a billion years ago. Therefore, Venus could have been captured in a spin-orbit resonant state by the gravitational torque of the Earth on the permanent deformation part of Venus; and this resonant state has lasted up to the present time.
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Shen, M., Zhang, C.Z. Dynamical evolution of the rotation of Venus. Earth Moon Planet 43, 275–287 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00117100
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00117100