Why Planets are Round: The Science Behind Gravity and Shape Formation

Jakarta –

Have you ever wondered why planets are round? Why aren’t they just squares, triangles or irregulars?

Reported by Space Place, US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a planet can form a world due to gravity. A planet’s gravity pulls mass evenly from all sides to the center, and from the center to the edges, like the spokes on a bicycle wheel.

If the force of gravity pulls objects equally from all sides of the planet, the whole planet will form a ball, which is a three-dimensional circle.

Gravitational force makes planets and the sun around

Collect Encyclopaedia Britannica, The sun and the planets in the Solar System are round because the gravitational force of their mass pulls everything towards the center. This makes the surface curved and circular.

“It’s surprising that we know so many spherical objects in space,” said Anjali Tripathi, an astronomer in the Exoplanet Research Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reported from Living science.

Incomplete round

Not all planets are perfectly round. In the solar system, the planets with the most perfect spherical shape are Mercury and Venus. Because both are rocky planets that move slowly.

Astronomer and Head of the Science Data Center, European Space Agency (ESAC), Bruno Merin, said that icy planets also tend to be almost perfectly round.

“(Because) the ice layer is evenly distributed on the surface,” said Bruno Merin Living science.

At the same time, Jupiter and Saturn are not completely spherical in shape. These giant gas planets are shaped like a basketball that is being sat on. According to NASA, the shape of the ibi is caused by its rotation speed causing the outer zone of the planet that rotates at the equator to move faster than the inner zone of the planet.

That is a brief explanation of the reasons for a planet being round in the universe. I hope this is useful and happy learning, detikers!

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