English

What is the maximum radius of cold planets?

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2025-09-10 v1 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Abstract

Planets have maximum radii close to that of Jupiter. Qualitatively, the reason for this maximum size is that, as one adds mass, the force of gravity becomes sufficiently strong to cause the radius to decrease. We show that this effect can be understood quantitatively using a simple variational principle very similar to that used to compute the size of the hydrogen atom.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.07048,
  title  = {What is the maximum radius of cold planets?},
  author = {David Garfinkle and Alberto G. Rojo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.07048},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in American Journal of Physics

R2 v1 2026-07-01T05:27:08.620Z