{"record":{"author":{"account_ref":null,"orcid":null},"builds_on":[],"content_schema":"pubphys.content.revision/1","content_sha256":"b62b5b7239e989d0f06ee7b895eb373b3d58364bc90deebe0b6c84e19458b1b6","created":"2026-10-15T23:43:22Z","files":[],"origin":{"assisted_by":[],"kind":"seed"},"parents":["8dfe37c2183b8048b4eae2bf621363c92beef4f301b205cde6346a65fc95156e","ce59fb6cd812fc05906d0c60a71c75ea22bc686bcf38e7c3ef7010834d98ee7b"],"salt":"00124ea6f0f4c3e6cc85d7f1933911802dd07f6e22408b6795a96dcfcd302e81","schema":"pubphys.record/2","site":"pubphys.com","target":null,"type":"revision"},"content":{"answer_type":"mechanism","assisted_by":[],"external_id":"earth.venus-divergence.superrotation","kind":"phenomenon","literature_status":"partially-resolved","n":"2","parents":[],"plain":"The solid body of Venus turns once every 243 Earth days, but its clouds circle the planet in about 4 days, roughly sixty times faster. Which waves and eddies keep feeding spin into the atmosphere is unresolved.","posed_since":"","precise":"At cloud-top altitude (about 70 km) zonal winds reach about $10^{4}\\,\\mathrm{cm}/\\mathrm{s}$, roughly 60 times the equatorial surface rotation speed. Identify the angular-momentum balance that maintains this superrotation: thermal tides driven by solar heating of the cloud layer, the Gierasch-Rossow-Williams mechanism (mean meridional circulation plus equatorward eddy transport by planetary waves and barotropic instability), or other waves, with their contributions as a function of altitude. An answer is a quantitative angular-momentum budget, from observations or from a general circulation model, that reproduces the observed wind profile and its variability.","problem_ref":"8dfe37c2183b8048b4eae2bf621363c92beef4f301b205cde6346a65fc95156e","references":"","settled_by":"Cloud-tracked and radio-occultation wind and temperature fields that resolve tidal and eddy momentum fluxes at several altitudes, matched by a general circulation model.","status_note":"Akatsuki cloud tracking (Horinouchi and coauthors, Science 2020, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz4439) found thermal tides accelerate the equatorial cloud-top flow while waves and turbulence decelerate it; the full vertical budget remains open.","title":"What maintains the superrotation of Venus's atmosphere?","topic_ref":null},"attested":{"attestation":{"batch":null,"client_id":null,"id_token_sha256":null,"kind":"platform"},"record_hash":"b1160128dd7c4a1389032ec46fc225b12a9b4d2a1442c75caefa230f0fc6528c","schema":"pubphys.attested/1"},"envelope":{"attested_hash":"2292e9b514db2f2b0660175890431c9f132f5bf3fa2318da9aa2dbb387ea1382","platform_signature":{"key_id":"c6afc19b31429869751f06879c75cd64ea92654423d15b44be775bf1310a60da","sig":"lMCH-fBipLZrYaSVXNo_eC9tmjcQXwzHcO16idz8vOR1cI3wZeTjhK2vbfcfQRwhiRzVP8CJ8uM-vW6VoG8zBg"},"schema":"pubphys.envelope/1"},"record_hash":"b1160128dd7c4a1389032ec46fc225b12a9b4d2a1442c75caefa230f0fc6528c","leaf_index":3242}