Earth is not the largest planet in the solar system. In fact, our planet is the densest world in the solar system despite being the fifth largest. The explanation is because it is one of the few rocky planets in our solar system made up mainly of silicate rocks or metals and has a solid surface. Find out how much the Earth weighs, according to scientists.
Earth weighs the most in relation to the other planets of the Solar System
Earth is the heaviest planet in the Solar System, with a mass of 5.975 trillion tons. Although it is not the largest, its density makes it the heaviest. The largest planets, such as Jupiter or Saturn, have a gaseous density and are mainly composed of hydrogen, helium and water in various physical states.
The density of the Earth is: 5.514 g/cm³ , compared to that of Mars is 3.93 g/cm³, that of Venus 5.24 g/cm³, that of our star, the Sun, 1.41 g/cm³ and that of Saturn, only 0.69 g/cm³. Logically, we cannot place the planet on a scale. Efforts to determine the weight of planet Earth began as early as the 18th century. Experts studied the planet’s gravitational pull on other objects and used math to calculate its size.
That is, the measure of the planet’s weight is derived from the gravitational pull that Earth has on nearby objects. But initially, the English physicist Henry Cavendish, to make the initial calculation of the Earth in 1978, relied on the law of universal gravitation formulated by the English physicist Isaac Newton . Newton showed that, for spherical objects, the simplifying assumption can be made that the entire mass of the object is concentrated at the center of the sphere.
The Earth weighs the most in the entire Solar System
How the Earth’s mass was previously estimated
Cavendish used this starting point by devising a somewhat rudimentary apparatus with lead spheres, but which helped him to determine the gravitational force of large and small spheres. In fact, what he did was make some minor improvements to seismologist John Michell’s invention to measure the attraction between two 0.73 kg and 158 kg lead balls.
He measured the force between the attraction of metal spheres using a torsion balance. He already knew the mass of both spheres and the distance between them. By carefully measuring the force between these spheres, he calculated their gravitational attraction. Since the Earth’s gravitational force on the smaller ball could be measured by weighing it, the ratio of the two forces allowed the Earth’s density to be calculated, using Newton’s law of universal gravitation .
Cavendish concluded that the Earth weighed 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms or 6,660 trillion tons. It’s funny how the results of his study were quite accurate compared to the results of other recent discoveries. Despite the rudimentary way in which Cavendish calculated how much the Earth weighed, he was not far wrong in his figure because over the centuries this number has only been corrected by 10%. Our planet is currently known to weigh, as previously mentioned, 5.975 trillion tons.
Scientists estimate that about 95,000 tons of hydrogen gas are lost from Earth’s atmosphere to outer space each year. Although other processes are involved, such as the loss of mass from radioactive decay in the Earth’s core, about 160 tons per year, and the loss of helium from the atmosphere, about 1,600 tons per year, this is a fairly small effect.
However, it gains about 40,000 tons of dust from meteor storms, for example, so a conservative estimate suggests that Earth loses about 50,000 tons of mass each year. However, given that the mass of the Earth is about 5.975 trillion tons, it would take about 120,000 trillion years to completely disappear at this rate of depletion. It’s many millions of times older than the age of the Universe, so we don’t have to worry.