Earth Sciences 1086F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Igneous Rock, Basalt
19 Mar 2019
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Document Summary
The division of planets into terrestrial and gas/ice giants is not based on mass, physical size, or any property other than density. A quick look at table 1 shows you the big differences in the two categories. The four terrestrial planets of our solar system (mercury, venus, earth and mars, fig. 1) are all quite close to the sun. They are all rocky bodies and, in fact, the heat energy they receive from the sun is simply too great for any body to be mainly ice (like the four gas/ice giants). We will review details of each planet in turn (making this a very large unit), and we have to start with earth simply because it is home and we know it best. Even the most abundant rock-type basalt is common to them all (basalt: an igneous rock, the primary product of volcanic lava, fine grained, dark grey to black).
