How big (or small) are the eight planets?

I’ve been watching the BBC series “The Planets” presented by Professor Brian Cox. It’s a fascinating series and seems to underline that everything is more complicated that you thought with tremendous changes over time.

Start with size. I think we grow up thinking that the planets are of roughly similar size with some a bit smaller and others rather bigger than Earth. But this is only true of Venus.

Mars is only about a tenth of the size of Earth and Mercury a mere 0.055. As for the giants, Uranus is 15 times the size of Earth, Neptune 17, Saturn a staggering 95, and Jupiter a mind-blowing 318.


 




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