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

Qmechanic
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Saif Khan SK
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  • "The four final rotation states of Venus", Alexandre C. M. Correia & Jacques Laskar, Nature 411, 767-770 (14 June 2001). I can't comment on the research, though. – CuriousOne Apr 13 '16 at 08:32
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    Uranus rotates nor clockwise, nor anticlockwise; its axis lies nearly in its orbital plane. – dominecf Apr 13 '16 at 08:40
  • But, why he have 'The four final rotation states' ? – Saif Khan SK Apr 13 '16 at 08:41
  • You will have to read the paper, I am afraid, I don't have the entire text, nor the time to read it myself, right now. – CuriousOne Apr 13 '16 at 08:46
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    Possible duplicates: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/7819/2451 , http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/25153/ , http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/201853/2451 and links therein. – Qmechanic Apr 13 '16 at 09:26

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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.

dominecf
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