Re: planetary and atmospheric rotation - origins, direction, etc

On Feb 29, 2:23=A0am, Tim Little <t...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:

>> If Venus underwent such a massive collision, where is the debris?
>> Venus should have one or more moons accreted from the debris.
>
> Slowly rotating planets are very unlikely to have moons.

For Mercury & Venus, this is doubly true. Any significant size
moonlets below synchronous orbits end up deorbited by tidal forces as
Tim mentioned, while any potential moons outside synchronous orbit
will evolve outwards, migrating clean out of orbit for such close in
planets. The result is that Mercury & Venus simply can't have
astronomically old moons, as all would have decayed out of orbit (one
way or another) by now.

--
Brian Davis