This fascinating video shows how fast a ball drops on the sun, the moon, and planets

Planetary scientist Dr. James O'Donoghue put together a fun video that compares how fast a ball drops onto 12 different surfaces in our solar system. For example, dropping a ball from .6 miles high and assuming no air resistance, it would take only 2.7 seconds to land on the Sun, 14.3 seconds to land on Earth, 15 seconds for Uranus, and a whopping 84.3 seconds for Ceres (a fine speed for us less nimble athletes).

"This should give an idea for the pull you would feel on each object," O'Donoghue says on his YouTube page.

From Universe Today:


"It might be surprising to see large planets have a pull comparable to smaller ones at the surface," O'Donoghue said on Twitter. "For example Uranus pulls the ball down slower than at Earth! Why? Because the low average density of Uranus puts the surface far away from the majority of the mass. Similarly, Mars is nearly twice the mass of Mercury, but you can see the surface gravity is actually the same… this indicates that Mercury is much denser than Mars." …
