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Brazil is the fifth largest country on Earth, whilst Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system. As a result Brazil is a flat land mass with a surface area of 8.5 million square kilometers and a volume of 340 million sq. kilometers while Ganymede is a spherical body with a surface area of 30.3 million sq. kilometers and a volume of 76.6 billion cubic kilometers.
For a more detailed breakdown of what makes both bodies as big as they are, continue reading as it will be covered more thoroughly in the sections below.
How Big Is Brazil?
Brazil, officially known as the Federative Republic of Brazil, is a country situated in South America. However, it makes up around half of the continent’s total landmass. It is the fifth largest country in the world, only beaten by the United States, Russia, Canada, and China.
Brazil stretches for roughly 4,350 kilometers from north to south and around 4,395 kilometers from east to west, giving its circumference a total landmass of around 8.5 million square kilometers. Within this landmass of Brazil, there are approximately 216 million people, which makes it the 6th most populated country in the world.
Brazil is so large that it covers 7,400 kilometers of the Atlantic coastline, sharing over 15,000 kilometers of inland borders with just about every South American country besides Ecuador and Chile. They border Uruguay to their South, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina to their South West.
Peru lies to the West of Brazil, while Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana lie to its immediate north. The total shape of Brazil forms an enormous irregular triangle that includes a huge amount of the Amazon rainforest, subtropical landscapes, savanna, wetlands, and mountainous regions.
If we are to assume that the average thickness of the land on Brazil is roughly 40km, this would lead to Brazil’s overall cubic volume reaching a relatively high number of 340 million cubic kilometers.
How Big Is Ganymede?
Ganymede is the largest moon of Jupiter and the largest object in our solar system not to be properly classified as a planet. It is the only moon with a magnetic field of its own, and one of the few bodies in our solar system known to possess a magnetosphere.
Ganymede has a diameter of 5,262 km and a surface area of 87,200,000 sq. km. Its diameter is larger than Brazil andt its surface area, even more so because the moon is spherical rather than flat. This gives it an impressive volume of 76,600,000,000 cubic km.
This moon is a source of fascination for scientists, with Hubble observations suggesting it may possess an underground ocean. Potentially, this ocean could contain more water than all the water on Earth combined with a depth of up to 100 km – ten times deeper than the oceans on Earth. This ocean is buried beneath a 150 km ice crust.
The terrain of Ganymede falls into two distinct categories: large, bright ridged regions and older, darker ground. This terrain pattern suggests the moon could have been under significant tension from global tectonic processes.
Galileo Galilei first discovered the moon in January 1610; significant because it was the first time scientists observed an object orbiting a planet other than Earth. And this helped us recognize that the Sun lies at the center of our Universe rather than the Earth.
Ganymede formed from leftover gas and dust that remained after Jupiter’s formation, which means that it is roughly the same age as our solar system – 4.5 billion years old.
Three main layers comprise Ganymede; a metallic core, a surrounding mantle of rock, and a top layer of ice. Computer models simulating Ganymede’s makeup show that more ice and oceans could be sandwiched between these main layers. The Hubble Space Telescope also discovered that the moon might have a thin atmosphere of oxygen.
Ganymede is the seventh moon from Jupiter, which orbits at around 1.070 million kilometers away from its planet. This means that Ganymede takes roughly seven Earth days to orbit its planet. While Ganymede is vast – larger than the planet Mercury – it only possesses half the mass of our closest planet to the Sun, classifying it as a low-density object.
Summary
Even if Brazil is the biggest south American country, it being a flat plane compared to Ganymede’s spherical shape and it also the largest moon in our solar system means that it’s almost guarenteed to be the larger entity, whether it be in regards to surface area and definetly when it comes to volume.
As for how big the differene is, Ganymede has a surface area roughly 3.5 times bigger and cubic volume that is roughly 190 times larger.
