What’s the distinction between a moon and a planet?
Trick query! In line with scientific definitions, there typically isn’t a lot of a distinction in any respect.
That may appear counterintuitive, but it surely’s true. And a few of these similarities you may see with your personal eyes. In the event you have a look at an image of Venus and an image of Jupiter’s moon Io subsequent to one another, they give the impression of being just about indistinguishable.
But it surely’s not simply appears. Rocky composition, common dimension, orbital behaviors—plenty of these qualities might be the identical on each planets and moons. And on the flip aspect, they are often very completely different between planets. For example, our little rocky Earth is much more just like the Moon than it’s, say, Saturn or Uranus.
Watch Pop Mech’s Jackie Appel focus on these definitions in additional element, nail down what a planet actually is, and resolve if there’s a basic distinction between planets and moons in any respect.
Because it seems, within the huge chaos that’s our cosmos, plenty of objects wind up being fairly comparable. However in our fixed seek for understanding, we people must resolve the place to attract our strains.
See the complete episode and be taught extra about why we name some spherical, rocky, celestial our bodies “moons” and others “planets.” And don’t overlook to take a look at the remainder of our present Pop Mech Explains the Universe, the place we discover different fascinating area tales identical to this one.
Jackie (she/her) is a author and editor from Pennsylvania with a background in astrophysics and a deep love of storytelling. She’s particularly keen on writing about area and physics, and loves sharing the bizarre wonders of the universe with anybody who desires to hear (and some individuals who don’t). You can even discover her on the Common Mechanics TikTok web page, the place she makes use of her voice as a substitute of her keyboard to speak about much more science-y tales.
