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A terrestrial planet, tellurian planet, telluric planet, or rocky planet, is a planet that is composed primarily of silicate, rocks or metals.Within the Solar System, the terrestrial planets accepted by the IAU are the inner planets closest to the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
All of the rocky inner planets, as well as the moon, have an iron-dominant core. Venus and Mars have an additional major element in the core. Venus’ core is believed to be iron-nickel, similarly to Earth. Mars, on the other hand, is believed to have an iron-sulfur core and is separated into an outer liquid layer around an inner solid core. [20]
Terrestrial planets are substantially different from the giant planets, which might not have solid surfaces and are composed mostly of some combination of hydrogen, helium, and water existing in various physical states. Terrestrial planets have a compact, rocky surfaces, and Venus, Earth, and Mars each also has an atmosphere. Their size, radius ...
The outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, compared to the inner planets Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury at the bottom right The four outer planets, called giant planets or Jovian planets, collectively make up 99% of the mass orbiting the Sun. [ h ] All four giant planets have multiple moons and a ring system, although only Saturn's ...
All four inner planets in the Solar System are silicon-based. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars: Terrestrial planet: Also known as a telluric planet or rocky planet. A planet that is composed primarily of carbonaceous or silicate rocks or metals. Solar System inner planets, TRAPPIST-1b, Kepler-37b
The nearest such planet was then as close as 12 light-years away [7] [8] but (see below) is now estimated slightly above four light-years away. On August 24, 2016, astronomers announced the discovery of a rocky planet in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth (not counting the
The inner Solar System, the region of the Solar System inside 4 AU, was too warm for volatile molecules like water and methane to condense, so the planetesimals that formed there could only form from compounds with high melting points, such as metals (like iron, nickel, and aluminium) and rocky silicates.
According to the solar nebular disk model, rocky planets form in the inner part of the protoplanetary disk, within the frost line, where the temperature is high enough to prevent condensation of water ice and other substances into grains. [64] This results in coagulation of purely rocky grains and later in the formation of rocky planetesimals.