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India is the seventh largest country on Earth, whilst Pluto is only a dwarf planet. Still, there’s no comparison regarding which one is bigger as India is a flat land mass with a surface area of 3.28 million square kilometers and a volume of 154.5 million kilometers while Pluto is a spherical body with a surface area of 17.6 million square kilometers and a volume of 6.4 billion cubic kilometers.
For a more thorough look at what makes each body as big as they are, continue reading as it will be covered in more detail below.
How Big Is India?
India is a South Asian country, which is the seventh largest by area and second most populated in the world (with over 1.3 billion people). In addition, it is the most populous democracy in the world. The Indian Ocean bounds it to the south, while the Arabian Sea covers the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal borders the southeast.
The diameter of India, measuring east to west, is 2,933km, while the extreme latitudes of north and south cover a length of 3,214km. This is actually larger than Pluto’s diameter. India’s coastline stretches over 7,000km, meaning that much of India’s landmass protrudes into the Indian ocean.
India’s total surface area is 3,287,590 sq. km and covers a diverse range of landscapes, from dry stretches of desert to snow-covered mountain peaks. Most of the central, northern, and eastern regions of India encompass the fertile lands of the Indo-Gangetic plain, while the sandy and rocky landscape of the Thar Desert occupy the west.
This fertile area – sometimes referred to as the Ganges plain – covers a large amount of India’s north and is created by soil deposits from the rivers that run from the vast Himalayan mountains. In some areas, the depth of this silt can be greater than 25,000ft!
The highest point is India is undefined because of a territorial dispute with Pakistan. The highest point within this territory (known as Kashmir) is K2, which stands at 8,611m. However, the highest point in India’s undisputed territory is Kanchenjunga which reaches a height of 8,598m.
Average crustal thickness varies between regions, ranging from 30-35 km in the plains to 80 km in the mountainous areas. Calculating the mean thickness among all these variations totals roughly 47km. If we then multiply this by the surface area, we can calculate the estimated volume of India to be 154,516,730 cubic km.
How Big Is Pluto?
Even though Pluto is a planet, which would have most individuals automatically assume it to be bigger than most if not all countries or continents on Earth, this won’t always be the case, especially when looking at different measurements to determine its size.
For the longest time it was assumed that Pluto, the now officially recognized dwarf planet, had a surface area smaller than the largest know country on Earth, Russia let alone China.
This is because prior to the newest mission in 2015, it was estimated to have a surface area of 16.7 million km² but the New Horizons launch, which observed the planet in more detail than even before, came to a more accurate calculation of the dwarf planets surface area, coming out to be 17.6 million km².
Pluto does not have an excessive number of mountains on its surface nevertheless, some of its ice capped mountains are rather tall with certain mountain ranges reaching peaks as high as 3.55km.
In regards to the planets overall thickness, taking into account Pluto’s diameter of 2,376.6km, it would be many times the thickness of every country within Earth, whether it be Russia, Canada, the United States, China and so on.
All in all, even if purely based on surface area Pluto is similar to that of the largest continents on Earth and possibly even smaller than some of the continents(like Asia) on our blue sphere however, when thickness and volume comes into play, Pluto blows all of them out of the water.
After all a volume of 6.4 billion cubic km is nothing to scoff at, and hardly a number that the majority if not all the flat land on Earth could even combine to beat.
Summary
Although India is amongst the largest countries on Earth whilst Pluto is not even ranked amongst the regular planets and much smaller than a good number of other moons, it is still bigger tha India.
In regards to surface area Pluto is roughly 5 times larger and roughly 20 times India’s volume and being a spehrical body, it definetly makes sense that Pluto would be the bigger of the two.