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Dwarf planets are bodies orbiting the Sun that are massive and warm enough to have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium, but have not cleared their neighbourhoods of similar objects. Since 2008, there have been five dwarf planets recognized by the IAU, although only Pluto has actually been confirmed to be in hydrostatic equilibrium [ 25 ] (Ceres is ...
where F is the gravitational force acting between two objects, m 1 and m 2 are the masses of the objects, r is the distance between the centers of their masses, and G is the gravitational constant. The first test of Newton's law of gravitation between masses in the laboratory was the Cavendish experiment conducted by the British scientist Henry ...
GM ☉, the gravitational parameter for the Sun as the central body, is called the heliocentric gravitational constant or geopotential of the Sun and equals (1.327 124 400 42 ± 0.000 000 0001) × 10 20 m 3 ⋅s −2. [16]
The distances between planets and between the planets and the Sun are (by many orders of magnitude) larger than the sizes of the sun and the planets. In consequence both the sun and the planets can be considered as point masses and the same formula applied to planetary motions. (As planets and natural satellites form pairs of comparable mass ...
Thus, the Sun occupies 0.00001% (1 part in 10 7) of the volume of a sphere with a radius the size of Earth's orbit, whereas Earth's volume is roughly 1 millionth (10 −6) that of the Sun. Jupiter, the largest planet, is 5.2 AU from the Sun and has a radius of 71,000 km (0.00047 AU; 44,000 mi), whereas the most distant planet, Neptune, is 30 AU ...
The gravity g′ at depth d is given by g′ = g(1 − d/R) where g is acceleration due to gravity on the surface of the Earth, d is depth and R is the radius of the Earth. If the density decreased linearly with increasing radius from a density ρ 0 at the center to ρ 1 at the surface, then ρ ( r ) = ρ 0 − ( ρ 0 − ρ 1 ) r / R , and the ...
The surface gravity of a white dwarf is very high, and of a neutron star even higher. A white dwarf's surface gravity is around 100,000 g (10 6 m/s 2) whilst the neutron star's compactness gives it a surface gravity of up to 7 × 10 12 m/s 2 with typical values of order 10 12 m/s 2 (that is more than 10 11 times that of Earth).
For example, if a TNO is incorrectly assumed to have a mass of 3.59 × 10 20 kg based on a radius of 350 km with a density of 2 g/cm 3 but is later discovered to have a radius of only 175 km with a density of 0.5 g/cm 3, its true mass would be only 1.12 × 10 19 kg.