• Question: why are planets round ??

    Asked by Tills to Aimee, Gemma, Hussain, Robert, Ross on 15 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Aimee Goodall

      Aimee Goodall answered on 15 Nov 2015:

      Planets are round as when they first formed they were made of molten materials and the force of gravity pulled all the material into the centre of the planet. As the planet cooled it kept it’s spherical (round) shape.

    • Photo: Hussain Jaffery

      Hussain Jaffery answered on 15 Nov 2015:

      Yeah, planets are usually round because they are so large that it is the most favourable shape for any heavy thing of that size to be – it takes the least amount of energy to have round plane,t as all the rocks and dust just fall into each other. This follows something called the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics which says that in the universe, disorder, or entropy, only increases, and to have a planet that was the shape of a cube would require too much energy to just happen randomly.

      The universe likes the cheapest way of arranging things and sphere don’t require too much extra work (energetically speaking of course).

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