Yesterday I stumbled on the fact that the size of Jupiter is roughly the geometric mean between the sizes of Earth and the Sun. That’s not too surprising: in some sense (i.e. on a logarithmic scale) Jupiter is the middle sized object in our solar system.
What I find more surprising is that a systematic search finds mean relationships that are far more accurate. The radius of Jupiter is within 5% of the geometric mean of the radii of the Earth and Sun. But all the mean relations below have an error less than 1%.
The radius of Mercury equals the geometric mean of the radii of the Moon and Mars, within 0.052%.
The radius of Mars equals the harmonic mean of the radii of the Moon and Jupiter, within 0.08%.
The radius of Uranus equals the arithmetic-geometric mean of the radii of Earth and Saturn, within 0.0018%.
See the links below for more on AM, GM, and AGM.
Now let’s look at masses.
The mass of Earth is the geometric mean of the masses of Mercury and Neptune, within 2.75%. This is the least accurate approximation in this post.
The mass of Pluto is the harmonic mean of the masses of the Moon and Mars, within 0.7%.
The mass of Uranus is the arithmetic-geometric mean of the masses of of the Moon and Saturn, within 0.54%.
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