MicroFactzzz#0009 · 🌌 Cosmic Oddities
The Sun Basically IS the Solar System — Everything Else Is a Rounding Error
The Sun holds over 99.8% of all the mass in the Solar System — every planet combined barely registers.
Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, every moon, asteroid, and comet combined still add up to less than 0.2% of the Solar System's total mass.
The rest, more than 99.8%, is the Sun alone. Its volume alone could fit over a million Earths.
Jupiter, the largest planet, is impressive by planetary standards — but next to the Sun it's still a footnote: Jupiter's mass is about one-thousandth of the Sun's.
The practical consequence: it's the Sun's gravity, not the planets', that dictates essentially all motion in the Solar System — planets orbit because they're, frankly, near-irrelevant specks around a giant ball of plasma.
Sources
- General knowledge / encyclopedic sources
This fact is based on generally available knowledge, not a single, citable source. See how we approach verification.
Krulicza Nora
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