• Question: how much does the sky weigh

    Asked by funky flat breads to Adam, Adele, Deborah, Matt, Samantha on 21 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Deborah Aitken

      Deborah Aitken answered on 21 Jun 2017:

      I had no idea until I looked this up “The Earth has a surface area of 197 million square miles. Multiply that by four billion to give you the number of square inches. With atmospheric pressure being an average 14.7 lbs (6.6kg) per square inch, this means that the sky weighs roughly 5.2 million billion metric tons.” BBC 14 Aug 2009

      So it turns out the sky weighs a lot!

    • Photo: Matthew Lee

      Matthew Lee answered on 21 Jun 2017:

      A lot! The higher up you guy the less the sky weighs as it becomes less dense (there’s less atmosphere) so the closer you are to the ground the more the sky weighs and the higher you are the less it weighs

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