How to Use inner planet in a Sentence

inner planet

noun
  • If those planets are rocky, their surfaces are hot enough to melt tin, zinc, and on that inner planet, maybe even iron.
    Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 6 Apr. 2012
  • The star's inner planets have orbits that resemble Jupiter's Galilean moons.
    Jay Bennett, Popular Mechanics, 22 Feb. 2017
  • It’s the only inner planet whose surface hasn’t been explored by a robot.
    Jamie Carter, Forbes, 17 Mar. 2022
  • But our inner planets seem to have formed with little of the element or lost it early in their history.
    John Timmer, Ars Technica, 12 Apr. 2023
  • How the light from the distant star flickers and mutates over time will provide a wealth of information about any inner planets.
    Daniel Clery, Science | AAAS, 11 Apr. 2018
  • Among the inner planets, only Mars has known Trojans—10 of them, the biggest measuring about 2 kilometers across.
    Richard Lovett, Science | AAAS, 20 Oct. 2017
  • The inner dots represent the inner planets, while the orange dot represents Jupiter.
    David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 21 Dec. 2018
  • BepiColombo will also be using the inner planets for help.
    Loren Grush, The Verge, 19 Oct. 2018
  • Furthermore, the two planets are orbiting in a resonance, with the inner planet circling its star twice as often as the outer planet.
    Korey Haynes, Discover Magazine, 3 June 2019
  • The standard model is humanity's own system: The inner planets are rocky and solid, outer planets are gaseous.
    David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 5 Feb. 2019
  • A century ago, our solar system seemed split into two tidy groups: the terrestrial inner planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars — and the giant, gaseous outer worlds.
    Eric Betz, Discover Magazine, 10 Nov. 2017
  • 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, 22 Mar. 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, 4 May 2018
  • Both worlds may have migrated early in their lives, which would have shifted their positions around the sun and sent barrages of water-rich comets cascading toward Earth and other inner planets.
    Shannon Hall, Scientific American, 30 Mar. 2023
  • The other inner planet, Mercury, is also visible this week just before sunrise.
    Jamie Carter, Forbes, 31 Oct. 2021
  • Although past observations have confirmed the result of planetary engulfment when sun-like stars expand – up to 1,000 times the original size – and engulf the system's inner planets, astronomers had not seen it until now.
    Julia Musto, Fox News, 4 May 2023
  • Earth, which is protected by a thick, but livable atmosphere enabled by our own internal energy source—the spinning dynamo of our molten iron core—is the only inner planet with adequate protection from the sun.
    Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 16 Oct. 2020
  • This conflict between the outer and inner planets is a defining point for a majority of the novel series: the books look closely at how massive imbalances of power and wealth can play out in new social and technological contexts.
    Andrew Liptak, The Verge, 24 May 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, 20 May 2019
  • The instability also scattered oddball moons and asteroids and triggered smaller bodies to pummel the inner planets.
    Paul Voosen, Science | AAAS, 21 Jan. 2020
  • 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, 20 June 2018
  • Two centuries later, astronomers attributed Mercury’s slightly peculiar orbit to the gravitational forces from an unseen inner planet, dubbed Vulcan.
    Ramin Skibba, The Atlantic, 8 Dec. 2017
  • Accordingly, unlike the inner planets that move quickly and govern daily activities, Uranus defines major periods of life with its prolonged revolutions.
    Aliza Kelly Faragher, Allure, 26 Apr. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'inner planet.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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