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Key facts
- Unit system
- astronomy
- Unit of
- mass
- Symbol
- M 🜨
- Si base unit
- (5.9722 ± 0.0006) × 10 kg
- U s customary
- ≈ 1.3166 × 10 pounds
via Wikipedia infobox
~16 min read
Encyclopedic overview
An Earth mass (denoted as M🜨, M♁ or ME, where 🜨 and ♁ are the astronomical symbols for Earth), is a unit of mass equal to the mass of the planet Earth. The current best estimate for the mass of Earth is M🜨 = 5.9722×10 kg, with a relative uncertainty of 10. It is equivalent to an average density of 5515 kg/m. Using the nearest metric prefix, the Earth mass is approximately six ronnagrams, or 6.0 Rg.
The Earth mass is a standard unit of mass in astronomy that is used to indicate the masses of other planets, including rocky terrestrial planets and exoplanets. One Solar mass is close to 333000 Earth masses. The Earth mass excludes the mass of the Moon. The mass of the Moon is about 1.2% of that of the Earth, so that the mass of the Earth–Moon system is close to 6.0457×10 kg.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Earth mass” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.