Venus is the second planet in the solar system. It has a very dense atmosphere overflowing with carbon dioxide that causes an intense greenhouse effect and, in addition, it is at a very high temperature due to its proximity to the solar star. But in addition, Venus is the only planet along with Mercury that does not have a moon . And this has brought astronomers, who cannot come up with an explanation, on their heads.
On the contrary, our well-known satellite revolves around the Earth, Mars has the small Phobos and Deimos, dozens of them orbit Jupiter and Saturn , Uranus has up to 27 and Neptune has 14.
To explain why they all have moons rotating around them, astronomers consider three different hypotheses : that the planet’s orbit captured them at some point when they were close to it; that arose from the accumulation of matter as the solar system was being formed; or that a cosmic object crashed against its surface and the remaining satellites of it ended up becoming satellites.
In the case of Mercury , however, the reason for the absence of moons would be quite clear. This planet is too close to the Sun and any possible satellite would have ended up being dragged to the star because of its great mass and its strong gravitational field of attraction.
But as far as Venus is concerned, it seems logical that it could have a moon , due to the large amount of matter that circulated around the Solar System during its formation, as well as the rest of the planets in the Solar System. In 2006, researchers Alex Alemi and David Stevenson , California Institute of Technology, appealed that there would have been a high probability that at least one cosmic object whose remains formed a satellite had collided with Venus. The scientists thought that, perhaps, over time it would have ended up moving too far from the planet until it was lost, in the same way that the Moon progressively moves away from the Earth .
And, in fact, Alemi explains that, apparently, ten million years later, Venus suffered another blow that reversed the direction of its rotation , on which it is postulated that perhaps that object would end up merging with the body of the planet. In any case, the absence of moons orbiting the brightest planet remains a mystery to astronomy.
