• Question: why does Jupiter have a stronger gravitational pull then earth.

    Asked by bumblebee3004 to Simon, Julia, Delma, Andrew, Alex on 14 Dec 2015.
    • Photo: Delma Childers

      Delma Childers answered on 14 Dec 2015:

      That all comes down to the definition of gravity. Gravity depends very much on the mass of an object. People could argue that even specks of dust have gravitational pull because they have mass. We simply don’t notice it, though, because the mass of the speck of dust is so tiny. Jupiter has a mass about 1000 times larger than Earth.

      The equation to calculate gravitational pull is also based on the size of the planet (or the radius, to be specific). Jupiter is also much, much larger than Earth. So when we plug the numbers into the equation to calculate gravity, it turns out that surface gravity on Jupiter is only ~2.5 times stronger than gravity on Earth. 😀

      Samantha has a really thorough explanation, too:

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