Wednesday, October 26, 2005

EARTH BY JOVE


I've found a flaw with most web pages that deal with our solar system. They commonly list Jupiter as '11x larger than Earth', or that 'Jupiter could hold 11 Earths if it were hollow'. This is not true. Let's do the Math...

Jupiter's diameter is 142,800 KM. V=(4/3)(3.14)r^3 then V= 1524695916736340.
And
Earth's diameter is 12,756.3 KM. It's V= 1086857953696.32.

That's somewhere around 1400x larger. This means the volume of Earth is roughly 1/1400 that of Jupiter. Meaning, somewhere around 1400 Earths could fit into Jupiter, were it hollow. Although neither the Earth or Jupiter are perfect spheres, and Jupiter is a little pancaked, you still don't get 11x. If the number 11 must be used, it would be accurate to say that 11 Earths could fit across the diameter of Jupiter.