Planetary motion dictates how we experience time, defining the length of a year and a day. Each celestial body in our solar system follows its own unique path around the Sun and spins at its own rate. This means that concepts of time, like age, change significantly when considering other planets.
A Venusian Year
A year on any planet is determined by the time it takes to complete one full orbit around the Sun. For Venus, one full trip around the Sun takes approximately 224.7 Earth days. This period is significantly shorter than Earth’s year, which lasts about 365 Earth days. Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 0.72 astronomical units (AU), a standard measure in space representing the average distance from the Earth to the Sun. Since Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth, it has a shorter orbital path and moves faster, resulting in a quicker completion of its year.
A Venusian Day
A day on a planet refers to the time it takes for that planet to complete one full rotation on its axis. Venus has a particularly unusual rotation, spinning very slowly and in the opposite direction compared to most other planets, a phenomenon known as retrograde rotation. This slow rotation means that a single Venusian day lasts approximately 243 Earth days. Intriguingly, this makes a Venusian day longer than its year. While this extreme day length is a distinctive feature of Venus, it does not directly influence how one calculates age, which is primarily based on orbital periods.
Finding Your Age on Venus
Age is universally measured by the number of orbital periods a celestial body has completed around its star. To determine your age on Venus, calculate how many Venusian years have passed since your birth. This process involves converting your current Earth age into Earth days and then dividing that total by the length of a Venusian year in Earth days.
To perform this calculation, first convert your age from Earth years into Earth days by multiplying your age by 365. For example, if you are 30 Earth years old, you are approximately 30 x 365 = 10,950 Earth days old. Next, divide this number of Earth days by 224.7 Earth days (the length of a Venusian year). Using the example, 10,950 Earth days divided by 224.7 equals approximately 48.73 Venusian years. Therefore, a 30-year-old on Earth would be nearly 49 years old on Venus.