All the planets in our solar system rotate 'Anticlockwise', except Venus. Why is the only planet that rotate' clockwise'?

Question

All the planets in our solar system rotate 'Anticlockwise', except Venus. Why is the only planet that rotate 'Clockwise'?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 13 '16 at 09:37

Without having any experimental data at hand, I guess that most planets formed from a uniformly rotating dust disc, and thus their rotational and orbital momentum have the same sign.

However, upon random tangential impacts, some of them (Venus, Uranus..) could change their original axis of rotation, and most probably it happened so early we will not find any traces thereof.

At SE, there are multiple related discussions.

All the planets in our solar system rotate 'Anticlockwise', except Venus. Why is the only planet that rotate' clockwise'?

1 Answers1