Weight on Venus

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Want to lose some weight? Travel to Venus and you’ll feel lighter right away. Well, the high temperatures, intense pressures, and corrosive chemicals will make the experience unpleasant (and kill you instantly), but you’ll definitely be lighter on the scales. So what would your weight be on Venus?

The force of gravity on the surface of Venus is 90% the force of gravity you experience on Earth. In other words, if your bathroom scale reads 100 kg, it would only read 90 kg on Venus. For you imperial folks, if you weighed 150 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 135 pounds on Venus.

If Earth and Venus are considered twin planets, why wouldn’t you weigh the same? Well, Venus and Earth are very similar, but they’re not actually twin planets. Venus is only 95% the size of Earth, and 81% of its mass. With the smaller size and mass, the force of gravity pulling you on the surface is lower.

To get your weight on Venus, just multiply your current weight by 0.9. That’s why 100 pounds becomes 90 pounds. You can also do the reverse calculation and figure out how high you could jump, or what you could carry on Venus by dividing a number by 0.9. For example, the world record high jump is currently 2.45 meters. If that was done on Venus, it would be 2.72 meters (2.45 / 0.9).

Just one last thing. It’s important to note that kilograms are a measure of mass; how much stuff an object has. Your mass doesn’t change when you travel from planet to planet, or anywhere in the Universe. It would be more accurate to measure your weight in newtons, but bathroom scales don’t have that option. That’s why we say that your weight in kilograms changes from planet to planet.

We have written many articles about Venus for Universe Today. Here’s an article about Venus’ wet, volcanic past, and here’s an article about how Venus might have had continents and oceans in the ancient past.

Want more information on Venus? Here’s a link to Hubblesite’s News Releases about Venus, and here’s NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide to Venus.

We have recorded a whole episode of Astronomy Cast that’s only about planet Venus. Listen to it here, Episode 50: Venus.