• Question: Why does jupiter spin the fastest around the sun?

    Asked by to Dave on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Dave Jones

      Dave Jones answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Jupiter doesn’t! The fastest in all senses is Mercury and this is because it is the closest to the Sun. That means that it completes one orbit much faster because it has a much smaller distance to go in order to make a complete circle around the Sun. It is also moving the fastest in general, because the speed of a planet during it’s orbit is related to the pull of gravity from the Sun. The pull of gravity depends on the distance from the Sun with the force being stronger further in, so again with Mercury being the closest it also moves the fastest.

      There’s a cool table of all the distances from the Sun, speeds and length of a year (the time taken to go around the Sun once) for the planets here:
      http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/orbital.htm

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