A terrestrial 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 are the inner planets closest to the Sun. The terms are derived from Latin words for Earth (Terra and Tellus), as these planets are, in terms of composition, "Earth-like".
Terrestrial planets have a solid planetary surface, making them substantially different from the much larger gas giants, which are composed mostly of some combination of hydrogen, helium, and water existing in various physical states.
Read more about Terrestrial Planet: Structure, Solar Terrestrial Planets, Extrasolar Terrestrial Planets, Types
Famous quotes containing the word planet:
“And so I look on those sentiments which make the glory of the human being, love, humility, faith, as being also the intimacy of Divinity in the atoms; and, that, as soon as the man is right, assurances and previsions emanate from the interior of his body and his mind; as, when flowers reach their ripeness, incence exhales from them, and, as a beautiful atmosphere is generated from the planet by the averaged emanations from all its rocks and soils.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)