Name: Carol A Jackson
Status: Other
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
How much mass do all nine planets have?
Replies:
This is not something that most scientists would remember since there is no
clear pattern and principle for the amount of mass. If you go look up any
introductory physics or astronomy book in the library, you will find the
masses listed. The amount of mass in the planets is presumably the mass in
the original cloud around our Sun. I suppose the most interesting question
is how much smaller that cloud was compared to the mass of the Sun. Would
you guess the cloud is as large as 10 percent of the mass of the Sun? Good
hunting.
Samuel P Bowen
Jupiter is so much bigger than the other planets that I think adding up all
8 others does not amount to a very large fraction of Jupiter's mass. Hey, I
actually looked it up:
Mercury: 0.33 x 10^24 kg
Venus: 4.87 x 10^24 kg
Earth: 5.98 x 10^24 kg
Mars: 0.65 x 10^24 kg
Jupiter: 1900 x 10^24 kg
Saturn: 570 x 10^24 kg
Uranus 87 x 10^24 kg
Neptune: 100 x 10^24 kg
Pluto: 0.013 x10^24 kg
Total: ~2674 x 10^24 kg
The various satellites of the planets (including our Moon) add in
another 10 or so x 10^24 kg.
The mass of the Sun is 1.989 x 10^30 kg
So all the planets add up to only just over 1/1000 th the mass of the Sun.
The rule of thumb I usually remember is that, in terms of volume, Jupiter is
about 1000 times bigger than Earth, and the Sun is about 300 times bigger
than Jupiter. The Sun is pretty big!
NEWTON is an electronic community for Science, Math, and Computer Science K-12 Educators, sponsored and operated by Argonne National Laboratory's Educational Programs, Andrew Skipor, Ph.D., Head of Educational Programs.
