inner planet
nounDefinition of inner planet
: any of the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars whose orbits are within the asteroid belt
Examples of inner planet in a Sentence
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The lunar rocks ultimately tell us of a violent chapter in solar system history, when a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment rained down space rocks, heavily scarring the inner planets. — Korey Haynes, Discover Magazine, "Legacy of Lunar Data: How Apollo Revealed our Moon," 20 May 2019 Many scientists think these holes occurred during a period of the Solar System known as the Late Heavy Bombardment — a period when a huge number of asteroids smacked into the inner planets. — Loren Grush, The Verge, "This weekend, China embarks on a historic mission to land on the far side of the Moon," 6 Dec. 2018 Instead, all planetary systems fortunate enough to host a gas giant in their outskirts should automatically have water-rich material falling on their rocky inner planets. — Nola Taylor Redd, Smithsonian, "How Jupiter May Have Gifted Early Earth With Water," 20 June 2018 As our solar system formed, the early sun blasted the inner planets with radiation and high-speed plasma, which drove off most of the gases (hydrogen, water vapor and CO2). — Scott Denning, Washington Post, "May the 4th be with Earth, a perfect planet that’s not too Hoth or Tatooine," 4 May 2018 Planet Nine’s gravitational influence could even serve as a solution to the long-standing mystery of why the sun’s axis of spin is tilted six degrees askew to the orbits of the inner planets. — Lee Billings, Scientific American, "Looking for Planet Nine, Astronomers Gaze into the Abyss," 22 Mar. 2018 The lunar rocks ultimately tell us of a violent chapter in solar system history, when a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment rained down space rocks, heavily scarring the inner planets. — Korey Haynes, Discover Magazine, "Legacy of Lunar Data: How Apollo Revealed our Moon," 20 May 2019 In July, Batygin, Brown and Elizabeth Bailey showed that Planet Nine’s presence could also exactly account for the 6-degree tilt of the sun with respect to the plane of the inner planets — a 150-year-old mystery. — Quanta Magazine, "Planet Nine Is Put on Trial in Absentia," 27 June 2017 The standard model is humanity's own system: The inner planets are rocky and solid, outer planets are gaseous. — David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, "Mysterious Iron Exoplanet Could Reveal the Secrets of Our Own Solar System," 5 Feb. 2019These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'inner planet.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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