Do scientists really know what the core of planets and stars are made of?
In: Earth Science
We have a really, really, really good idea. We’re not gonna be 100% sure about the exact numbers, but we’re gonna have a really good estimate.
We use different wavelengths of light or xrays or radiowaves to measure how quickly they travel through different materials, which gives us a really good idea of how much of that material there is. We measure all those things on Earth and then approximate based on their gravity or atmosphere or whatever.
If there is some unknown material, we won’t be able to measure that. And because they’re so far away, we might be off by 0.0000001% here or there, just based on the math.
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