Study Plan
The vast quantity of information about the innermost planets and our Moon returned by space exploration can be hard to digest. One way to organize this information is to compare the innermost planets in our Solar System: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, collectively known as the terrestrial planets. Although the Moon is Earth's lone natural satellite, and not a planet, we also discuss it in this chapter because of its similarities to the terrestrial planets. Our approach is called comparative planetology. By the end of this chapter you should be able to:
- Explain the roles of the four processes that shape a terrestrial planet's surface
- Identify the age of a planet's surface from the concentration of craters
- Explain how radiometric dating tells us the ages of rocks
- Diagram Earth's interior using information gained from seismic waves generated by earthquakes
- List the forms that tectonism takes on different planets
- Explain what causes tides and how they can heat the interior of a planet.
- List the many ways in which erosion modifies and wears down surface features