this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
203 points (97.2% liked)

Science Memes

18262 readers
2827 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
all 25 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] SarahValentine@lemmy.blahaj.zone 52 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It only constitutes 99.86% of the mass in the solar system!

[–] Thorry@feddit.org 37 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

And 0.1% is Jupiter, the other 0.04% is everything else...

[–] spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've never heard it described this way. If accurate... I get it now

[–] Thorry@feddit.org 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Most of what is left after Jupiter is in Saturn and after that Neptune and Uranus take up a lot of the mass. The amount of mass in the small terrestrial planets, all of the moons, all of the asteroids etc. is less than 0.002% of the mass of the Solar system.

That's bananas. I knew the relative sizes were absurdly imbalanced, but no one has explained it in a way that I could imagine those differences. Thanks very much!

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 day ago

Misleading meme.

The bigger the star, the faster it burns.

[–] ieGod@lemmy.zip 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Fake news. We replaced over 99% of the mass of the entire solar system with LEDs.

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Here's another fun fact for you: Basically, if you replaced the sun with a big LED, it would last about equally long assuming it outputs the same amount of light power. that's because the sun gives off most of its power as light power already, because the heat has no other way to escape except through black body radiation

[–] trolololol@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Ah yes I read that post too

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think it's pretty neat that we still retain a bunch of heat in our planet's core from the time of its formation.

i read up on that recently and IIRC the heat that comes out of earth's interior is about 0.03% of the total power we get on the surface of earth, the vast majority is from sunlight.

and earth's interior heat is about half-and-half from primordial heat (from when earth was formed) and from decay of primordial radionuclids and their decay products (basically uranium and thorium decaying)

[–] growsomethinggood@reddthat.com 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Slander, our sun isn't even big enough to super nova!

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago

or collapse into a blackhole.

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago

That's why your mom can blow any minute.

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

If it was it would burn faster

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 1 day ago

it will become more"obese" once he becomes a red giant near the end of its life.

[–] grandel@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not a science guy can somebody please explain?

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 14 points 1 day ago

Because it's big.

[–] the_beber@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago

And most of it will never even be used up.

[–] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

I initially thought this meme was like Pacman, the Sun needs more fuel, must gobble gobble

[–] waigl@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Earth is shown way too big in this picture…

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I got that impression too, but after some hand-based estimation I think the problem is that the Sun is cropped and that throws our senses off.

[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Either way, a banana would be useful.

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Hey, the bananas are all there. You can just look at their natural place.