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Africa is slightly smaller than Jupiter’s moon, Europa, when landmass is considered coming in at around 30.3 million square kilometers, whereas Europa has 30.9 million square kilometers of land covered in a thick blanket of ice. As for volume, Africa’s is 1.21 billion cubic kilometers compared to Europa’s 15.9 billion cubic kilometers.
For a more thorough breakdown on what makes both entities as big as they are continue reading as it will be covered in a more detail below.
How Big Is Africa?
Africa is the Earth’s second largest continent covering a total area of approximately 30.3 million square kilometers, equal to about 20% of Earth’s total land mass or 6% of the planet’s surface area. Africa possesses the world’s largest desert, plus it has the longest river of any continent, the Nile.
Africa is the second highest popululated continent on Earth. The continent has 54 countries, including Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, and it accounts for roughly 17% of the world’s population, with more than 1.4 billion people.
There are eight main physical regions of Africa: the Sahara, the savanna, the rainforest, the Great Lakes, the Sahel, the Ethiopian Highlands, the Swahili Coast, and southern Africa. The Sahara Desert extends over the northern third of Africa and is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. Its size is 9.2 million square kilometers – roughly the same size as the entire United States.
The African savannah is a vast grassland that covers most of the African continent (around 65%). It extends from the Red Sea at the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west and from Senegal in the north to Sudan in the south.
A savannah is a type of landscape that consists of grasslands with few trees, bushes, or shrubs. The grasses are typically short but can grow up to almost four meters tall. The dominant vegetation is acacia and baobab trees, which provide shade and shelter for animals during daytime hours.
Africa possesses some of the world’s highest mountains; Mount Kilimanjaro is the tallest, which rises 19,341 feet from its base near the equator to its peak in Tanzania. Africa extends to a length of 8,000km between its northern and southern extremities in Tunisia and South Africa; its width of 7,400km stretches from Xaafuun Point in Somalia to Almadi Point in Senegal.
The thickness of Earth’s crust ranges from 5 to 70km and is generally thicker under continental land where it averages 40km. Taking this figure and multiplying it by Africa’s surface area, we can calculate the rough volume of the continent at 1.21 billion cubic kilometers. This might sound like a sizable volume, but it’s no match for the almost 16 billion cubic kilometers of Europa’s volume.
How Big Is Europa?
Europa is a moon that orbits Jupiter and is the smallest of four Galilean moons to do so. It’s the sixth closest to Jupiter out of an astonishing 80 known moons and is the sixth largest moon in our solar system.
Europa was first discovered by the renowned Galileo Galilei back in 1610 and was named Europa in honor of the Phonecian mother of a mythological king of Crete named Minos. Europa was also supposedly the lover of Zeus, who himself was the Greek equivalent of the Roman deity Jupiter.
While Europa is only around 90% the size of earth’s moon, that still makes it a whopping 30, 900,000 kilometers squared. Europa has a diameter of 3,121.6 kilometers, and the majority of the planet is covered in a thick ice sheet that is up to 25 kilometers thick in place.
The total volume of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, is around 15.9 billion square cubic kilometers, and while this may sound like a huge number, it’s only around 0.015% of Earth’s volume, which comes in at approximately 1 Trillion cubic kilometers.
While Europa is but a fraction of the size of earth, it has been suggested by scientists that it could have twice as much water. Various researchers have even suggested that the vast and rich oceans of Europa may be the most promising place in our solar system to look for life.
Summary
Africa is the second largest continent on Earth while Europa is the sixth largest moon in our Solar System ystem, where besides diameter it is the bigger of the two.
In regards to surface area Europa is roughly 600,000 sq. km larger and around 28 times larger in volume, which makes sense due to its spherical shape.