• Question: Is it true that you could fit all of the planets in our solar systme into the sun and still have room for several double decker buses?

    Asked by elmo97 to Andrew, Marianne on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      No idea and to be honest why would you want to? Pity the double-decker bus it’s always being squeezed into things and lined up end to end or placed one on top of the other. I hope double-deckers are sociable beasts. I bet there are double-deckers across the land just aching for a nice quiet parking space at the end of the world wherre they can ‘be alone’.

      I guess you’re talking about how amazingly massive the sun is compared to the rest of the solar system. That’s cool. Andrewm or Marianne will know….

    • Photo: Andrew Maynard

      Andrew Maynard answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      Hi elmo97,

      This sounds reasonable, although I suspect that there might be enough room left for more than just several double decker buses. But let’s do the calculations:

      Using http://wolframalpha.com, the volume of the Sun is around 1.4 x 10^27 meters cubed (that’s roughly 1 with 27 zeros after it!)

      Mercury is 6.1×10^19 meters cubed
      Venus is 9.3×10^23 meters cubed
      Earth is 1.1×10^21 meters cubed
      Mars is 1.6×10^20 meters cubed
      Jupiter is 1.4×10^24 meters cubed
      Saturn is 8.1×10^23 meters cubed
      Uranus is 6.7×10^22 meters cubed
      Neptune is 5.8×10^22 meters cubed
      Throwing Pluto in as well, Pluto’s volume is 7×10^18 meters cubed
      and the volume of a double decker bus is around 125 meters cubed (Wolfram Alpha didn’t have that!)

      So, all together, the eight planets plus Pluto have a volume of 3.27×10^24 meters cubed.

      Which means that all the planets (plus Pluto) of the solar system could fit into the Sun nearly 430 times!

      Or…

      If you put all the planets (plus Pluto) into the Sun, you would have enough room left for 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 double decker buses!

      🙂

    • Photo: Marianne Baker

      Marianne Baker answered on 24 Jun 2010:

      I do believe I’ve heard that somewhere before, yeah. Not that I’ve checked the truth of it…

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