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The most abundant silicate minerals on the Earth's surface include quartz, the feldspars, amphibole, mica, pyroxene, and olivine. [25] Common carbonate minerals include calcite (found in limestone), aragonite, and dolomite. [26] Elevation histogram of the surface of the Earth—approximately 71% of the Earth's surface is covered with water.
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 .
Thus, the Sun occupies 0.00001% (1 part in 10 7) of the volume of a sphere with a radius the size of Earth's orbit, whereas Earth's volume is roughly 1 millionth (10 −6) that of the Sun. Jupiter, the largest planet, is 5.2 AU from the Sun and has a radius of 71,000 km (0.00047 AU; 44,000 mi), whereas the most distant planet, Neptune, is 30 AU ...
List of rocks on Mars; List of valles on Mars; List of chasmata on Mars; List of plains on Mars; List of terrae on Mars; List of areas of chaos terrain on Mars; List of surface features of Mars seen by the Spirit rover; List of surface features of Mars seen by the Opportunity rover; see also List of Martian canals
Earth's bow shock is about 17 kilometers (11 mi) thick [12] and located about 90,000 kilometers (56,000 mi) from Earth. [13] The magnetopause exists at a distance of several hundred kilometers above Earth's surface. Earth's magnetopause has been compared to a sieve because it allows solar wind particles to enter.
Today, Mars does not have a global magnetic field. However, Mars did power an early dynamo that produced a strong magnetic field 4 billion years ago, comparable to Earth's present surface field. After the early dynamo ceased, a weak late dynamo was reactivated (or persisted up to) ~3.8 billion years ago.
Most of Earth's land hosts vegetation, [109] but considerable amounts of land are ice sheets (10%, [110] not including the equally large area of land under permafrost) [111] or deserts (33%). [112] The pedosphere is the outermost layer of Earth's land surface and is composed of soil and subject to soil formation processes. Soil is crucial for ...
A class of extrasolar planets whose characteristics are similar to Jupiter, but that have high surface temperatures because they orbit very close—between approximately 0.015 and 0.5 AU (2.2 × 10 ^ 6 and 74.8 × 10 ^ 6 km)—to their parent stars, whereas Jupiter orbits its parent star (the Sun) at 5.2 AU (780 × 10 ^ 6 km), causing low ...