While we’re at it: If you dig a deep hole in the Earth, the gravity will be almost constant at any depth, all the way until you get to the edge of the core. This is due to variations in the density of the mantle.
About 28 gees.
That’s only true for gas giants Saturn-sized and smaller. Jupiter is denser and has a gravity 2.53 x Earth; gas giants that are more massive than Jupiter will be even more dense, and will have even greater gravity levels at the top of the atmosphere (assuming constant temperature).
More to the point, gas giants that are more massive than Jupiter will even have smaller radii. Jupiter is very near the maximum possible radius for a gas giant.
Something wonderful is going to happen.
Taking the gas giants out of it, since their ‘surface’ is chosen specifically to provide a common rule, the 1g thing only includes Earth and Venus. Mercury and Mars do not fit the pattern.
Around other star systems we have found rocky planets and gas giants of many different sizes and densities with widely varying surface gravity. So I would rather chalk up the relative similarity between Earth and Venus as a coincidence.
Neutron stars do this, essentially, with something like 20 billion times earth’s gravity at the surface. You won’t see it happen anywhere in our solar system, though.
You jest, of course. But Vulcan canonically has higher gravity than Earth. And the other planets we are are self-sorting; there’s enough terrestrial planet in the Trek galaxy that Starfleet only bothers with the Class Ms – those with gravity, temperature, and atmosphere compatible with humanoid life.
Very minor nitpick. G (in caps) is the universal gravitational constant that appears in Newton’s law of gravitation. This has nothing to do with the earth per se. OTOH, g (small letters) is the familiar acceleration due to gravity (i.e., the weight of a unit mass) on the surface of the earth.
Thus, for example, the surface gravity on Jupiter is about 2.5 g, not 2.5 G. The two quantities are related (by Newton’s law of gravitation), but they aren’t quite the same.
Yes, but it was specified that the moleccular structure wouldn’t change, and being on the surface of a neutron star would definitely change that.
Umm…can give us a hint?
Did it already happen and I missed it?
Did you intend that for this thread? Maybe you didn’t intend to type it at all, but you were in such a good mood you thought you were just thing aloud?
How about. . . It’s a movie sequel, and the numerals in the title are the same as its predecessor, but rearranged.
Attempt no landings there.
But … it’s full of stars …
Going back to the 1g gas/ice giants. It was noted that a surface and a surface gravity was ‘assigned’ at a certain level, thus perhaps not 1g. It also seems like this ‘altitude’ is a place where pressure quickly increases so not unreasonable to assign a ‘surface’ level there, it may be a place where we can float something one day. But what would be the gravity distribution vs. depth then. In the center it is zero, it would rise to a certain level then fall again. Where is the 1g in this distribution? What would be the ‘correct’ g to give them?
That’s an interesting question. This graph (which is only very approximate) shows how the gravity of various planets increases with depth.
Earth has a small peak just at the core/mantle boundary, while Jupiter and Saturn have massive peaks at the boundary between the rocky core and the metallic/hydrogen mantle.
Saturn has a gravity level of 1.065 g at the (arbitrary) level defined by 1 bar of pressure. To get to 1g you’d have to go a little higher. So a rough answer to your question “Where is the 1g in this distribution?” is
a/ somewhere in the core and
b/ somewhere slightly above the arbitrarily defined ‘surface’.
One thing we haven’t accounted for on Saturn is the rapid rotation. At the equator, the perceived gravity level would only be 0.9 g, because of centrifugal force. The slightly flattened poles have slightly higher gravity too, about 1.2 . So you could find a one g latitude on Saturn somewhere between the equator and the poles.
Could you give a link to the page where that jpeg is found, rather than the jpeg itself? I’m getting an error message, and while I’ve poked around Seligman’s website, I haven’t found this table.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country?
“You mean centripetal force. There’s no such thing as centrifugal force.”
