In relation to distance to the sun, the order of the planet type is rock, rock, rock, rock, rock, gas, gas, gas, gas. Why did this happen? Is it something to do with the sun? Or is it just a coincidence?
In: Physics
Na it’s not a coincidence. Planets closer to the sun have their atmospheres stripped away by solar wind from the sun. Farther away the solar wind isn’t as strong and the gas planets far enough away just collected all the gas blown away from the inside. Even now Earth is still loosing about 90 tons of atmosphere a day. Just on a planet scale that isn’t too much.
And inside the gas giants there are still solid rock and metal cores that are a lot larger than Earth. They just happen to have a lot more gas as a percentage of their volume.
There’s also a bit of contribution added because ices like me thane ice can be formed once you get far enough away. Since the ices stick together better than gasses the outer planets got a bit of a head start on collecting mass vs the inner planets.
The gas planets are also a lot larger so they probably need more time to cool before joint the rocks
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