How planets are classified?

In our Solar System, astronomers often divide the planets into two groups — the inner planets and the outer planets. The inner planets are closer to the Sun and are
smaller and rockier. The outer planets are further away, larger and made up mostly of gas.

The inner planets (in order of distance from the sun, closest to furthest) are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. After an asteroid belt comes the outer planets, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The interesting thing is, in some other planetary systems discovered, the gas giants are actually quite close to the sun.

This makes predicting how our Solar System formed an interesting exercise for astronomers. Conventional wisdom is that the young Sun blew the gases into the outer
fringes of the Solar System and that is why there are such large gas giants there. However, some extrasolar systems have “hot Jupiters” that orbit close to their Sun.

The inner planets

The four inner planets are called terrestrial planets because their surfaces are solid (and, as the name implies, somewhat similar to Earth — although the term can be
misleading because each of the four has vastly different environments). They’re made up mostly of heavy metals such as iron and nickel, and have either no moons or
few moons. Below are brief descriptions of each of these planets based on this information from NASA.

Mercury: Mercury is the smallest planet in our Solar System and also the closest. It rotates slowly (59 Earth days) relative to the time it takes to rotate around the sun
(88 days). The planet has no moons, but has a tenuous atmosphere (exosphere) containing oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium and potassium. The NASA
MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft is currently orbiting the planet.

The terrestrial planets of our Solar System at approximately relative sizes. From left, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Credit: Lunar and Planetary Institute

Venus: Venus was once considered a twin planet to Earth, until astronomers discovered its surface is at a lead-melting temperature of 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480
degrees Celsius). The planet is also a slow rotator, with a 243-day long Venusian day and an orbit around the sun at 225 days. Its atmosphere is thick and contains
carbon dioxide and nitrogen. The planet has no rings or moons and is currently being visited by the European Space Agency’s Venus Express spacecraft.

Earth: Earth is the only planet with life as we know it, but astronomers have found some nearly Earth-sized planets outside of our solar system in what could be
habitable regions of their respective stars. It contains an atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen, and has one moon and no rings. Many spacecraft circle our planet to
provide telecommunications, weather information and other services.

Mars: Mars is a planet under intense study because it shows signs of liquid water flowing on its surface in the ancient past. Today, however, its atmosphere is a wispy
mix of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and argon. It has two tiny moons (Phobos and Deimos) and no rings. A Mars day is slightly longer than 24 Earth hours and it takes the
planet about 687 Earth days to circle the Sun. There’s a small fleet of orbiters  and rovers at Mars right now, including the large NASA Curiosity rover that landed in
2012.

The outer planets of our Solar System at approximately relative sizes. From left, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Credit: Lunar and Planetary Institute

The outer planets

The outer planets (sometimes called Jovian planets or gas giants) are huge planets swaddled in gas. They all have rings and all of plenty of moons each. Despite their
size, only two of them are visible without telescopes: Jupiter and Saturn. Uranus and Neptune were the first planets discovered since antiquity, and showed astronomers
the solar system was bigger than previously thought. Below are brief descriptions of each of these planets based on this information from NASA.

Jupiter: Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System and spins very rapidly (10 Earth hours) relative to its orbit of the sun (12 Earth years). Its thick atmosphere is
mostly made up of hydrogen and helium, perhaps surrounding a terrestrial core that is about Earth’s size. The planet has dozens of moons, some faint rings and a Great
Red Spot — a raging storm happening for the past 400 years at least (since we were able to view it through telescopes). NASA’s Juno spacecraft is en route and will
visit there in 2016.

Saturn: Saturn is best known for its prominent ring system — seven known rings with well-defined divisions and gaps between them. How the rings got there is one
subject under investigation. It also has dozens of moons. Its atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium, and it also rotates quickly (10.7 Earth hours) relative to its time
to circle the Sun (29 Earth years). Saturn is currently being visited by the Cassini spacecraft, which will fly closer to the planet’s rings in the coming years.

Near-infrared views of Uranus reveal its otherwise faint ring system, highlighting the extent to which it is tilted. Credit: Lawrence Sromovsky, (Univ. Wisconsin-
Madison), Keck Observatory.

Uranus: Uranus was first discovered by William Herschel in 1781. The planet’s day takes about 17 Earth hours and one orbit around the Sun takes 84 Earth years. Its
mass contains water, methane, ammonia, hydrogen and helium surrounding a rocky core. It has dozens of moons and a faint ring system. There are no spacecraft slated
to visit Uranus right now; the last visitor was Voyager 2 in 1986.

Neptune: Neptune is a distant planet that contains water, ammmonia, methane, hydrogen and helium and a possible Earth-sized core. It has more than a dozen moons
and six rings. The only spacecraft to ever visit it was NASA’s Voyager 2 in 1989.

History of Earth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the history of modern humans, see History of the world. For the history of life on Earth, see  Evolutionary history of life.
This article is about scientific evidence concerning the history of Earth. For religious accounts, see Creation myth.

The history of Earth concerns the development of planet Earth from its formation to the present day.[1][2] Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to the
understanding of the main events of Earth's past. The age of Earth is approximately one-third of the age of the universe. An immense amount of geological change has
occurred in that timespan, accompanied by the emergence of life and its subsequent evolution.
Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula.[3][4][5] Volcanic outgassing probably created the primordial atmosphere and then the
ocean; but the atmosphere contained almost no oxygen and so would have been toxic to most modern life including humans. Much of the Earth was molten because of
frequent collisions with other bodies which led to extreme volcanism. A giant impact collision with a planet-sized body named Theia while Earth was in its earliest
stage, also known as Early Earth, is thought to have been responsible for forming the Moon. Over time, the Earth cooled, causing the formation of a solid crust, and
allowing liquid water to exist on the surface.
The geological time scale (GTS) clock (see graphic) depicts the larger spans of time from the beginning of the Earth as well as a chronology of some definitive events
of Earth history. The Hadean Eon represents time before the reliable (fossil) record of life beginning on Earth; it began with the formation of the planet and ended at 4.0
billion years ago as defined by international convention.[6] The Archean and Proterozoic eons follow; they produced the abiogenesis of life on Earth and then the
evolution of early life. The succeeding eon is the Phanerozoic, which is represented by its three component eras: the Palaeozoic; the Mesozoic, which spanned the rise,
reign, and climactic extinction of the huge dinosaurs; and the Cenozoic, which presented the subsequent development of dominant mammals on Earth.
Hominins, the earliest direct ancestors of the human clade, rose sometime during the latter part of the Miocene epoch; the precise time marking the first hominins is
broadly debated over a current range of 13 to 4 mya. The succeeding Quaternary period is the time of recognizable humans, i.e., the genus Homo, but that period's two
million-year-plus term of the recent times is too small to be visible at the scale of the GTS graphic. (Notes re the graphic: Ga means "billion years"; Ma, "million
years".)
The earliest undisputed evidence of life on Earth dates at least from 3.5 billion years ago,[7][8][9] during the Eoarchean Era after a geological crust started to solidify
following the earlier molten Hadean Eon. There are microbial mat fossils such as stromatolites found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone discovered in Western
Australia.[10][11][12] Other early physical evidence of a biogenic substance is graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in
southwestern Greenland[13] as well as "remains of biotic life" found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia.[14][15] According to one of the researchers, "If life
arose relatively quickly on Earth … then it could be common in the universe."[14]
Living forms derived from photosynthesis appeared between 3.2 and 2.4 billion years ago and began enriching the atmosphere with oxygen. Life remained mostly
small and microscopic until about 580 million years ago, when complex multicellular life arose, developed over time, and culminated in the Cambrian Explosion about
541 million years ago. This event drove a rapid diversification of life forms on Earth that produced most of the major phyla known today; and it marked the end of the
Proterozoic Eon and the beginning of the Cambrian Period of the Paleozoic Era. More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, [16] that ever
lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.[17][18]Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million,[19] of which about 1.2 million
have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described.[20] More recently, in May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on
Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described.[21]
Geological change has been a constant of Earth's crust since the time of its formation, and biological change since the first appearance of life. Species continue
to evolve, taking on new forms, splitting into daughter species or going extinct in the process of adapting or dying in response to ever-changing physical environments.
The process of plate tectonicscontinues to play a dominant role in the shaping of Earth's oceans and continents and the living species they harbor. Changes in
the biosphere—now dominated by human activity—continue, in turn, to produce significant effects on the atmosphere and other systems of the Earth's surface, such as
the integrity of the ozone layer, the proliferation of greenhouse gases, the conditions of productive soils and clean air and water, and others.

PLANET IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Terrestrial planets

The inner four worlds are called “terrestrial planets,” because, like Earth, their surfaces are all rocky. Pluto, too, has a solid surface (and a very
frozen one) but has never been grouped with the four terrestrials.
Jovian planets

The four large outer worlds — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — are known as the “Jovian planets” (meaning “Jupiter-like”) because they are
all huge compared to the terrestrial planets, and because they are gaseous in nature rather than having rocky surfaces (though some or all of them
may have solid cores, astronomers say). According to NASA, "two of the outer planets beyond the orbit of Mars — Jupiter and Saturn — are known
as gas giants; the more distant Uranus and Neptune are called ice giants." This is because, while the first two are dominated by gas, while the last two
have more ice. All four contain mostly hydrogen and helium.

Dwarf planets

The IAU definition of a full-fledged planet goes like this: A body that circles the sun without being some other object's satellite, is large enough to be
rounded by its own gravity (but not so big that it begins to undergo nuclear fusion, like a star) and has "cleared its neighborhood" of most other
orbiting bodies. Yeah, that’s a mouthful

Mercury

The closest planet to the sun, Mercury is only a bit larger than Earth's moon. Its day side is scorched by the sun and can reach 840 degrees
Fahrenheit(450 Celsius), but on the night side, temperatures drop to hundreds of degrees below freezing. Mercury has virtually no atmosphere to
absorb meteor impacts, so its surface is pockmarked with craters, just like the moon. Over its four-year mission, NASA's MESSENGER
spacecraft has revealed views of the planet that have challenged astronomers' expectations.

Venus

The second planet from the sun, Venus is terribly hot, even hotter than Mercury. The atmosphere is toxic. The pressure at the surface would crush
and kill you. Scientists describe Venus’ situation as a runaway greenhouse effect. Its size and structure are similar to Earth, Venus' thick, toxic
atmosphere traps heat in a runaway "greenhouse effect." Oddly, Venus spins slowly in the opposite direction of most planets.

Earth

The third planet from the sun, Earth is a waterworld, with two-thirds of the planet covered by ocean. It’s the only world known to harbor life. Earth’s
atmosphere is rich in life-sustaining nitrogen and oxygen. Earth's surface rotates about its axis at 1,532 feet per second (467 meters per second) —
slightly more than 1,000 mph (1,600 kph) — at the equator. The planet zips around the sun at more than 18 miles per second (29 km per second).

Mars

The fourth planet from the sun, is a cold, dusty place. The dust, an iron oxide, gives the planet its reddish cast. Mars shares similarities with Earth: It
is rocky, has mountains and valleys, and storm systems ranging from localized tornado-like dust devils to planet-engulfing dust storms. It snows on
Mars. And Mars harbors water ice. Scientists think it was once wet and warm, though today it’s cold and desert-like.

Mars' atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist on the surface for any length of time. Scientists think ancient Mars would have had the
conditions to support life, and there is hope that signs of past life — possibly even present biology — may exist on the Red Planet.

Jupiter

The fifth planet from the sun, Jupiter is huge and is the most massive planet in our solar system. It’s a mostly gaseous world, mostly hydrogen and
helium. Its swirling clouds are colorful due to different types of trace gases. A big feature is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm which has raged for
hundreds of years. Jupiter has a strong magnetic field, and with dozens of moons, it looks a bit like a miniature solar system.

Saturn

The sixth planet from the sun is known most for its rings. When Galileo Galilei first studied Saturn in the early 1600s, he thought it was an object
with three parts. Not knowing he was seeing a planet with rings, the stumped astronomer entered a small drawing — a symbol with one large circle
and two smaller ones — in his notebook, as a noun in a sentence describing his discovery. More than 40 years later, Christiaan Huygens proposed
that they were rings. The rings are made of ice and rock. Scientists are not yet sure how they formed. The gaseous planet is mostly hydrogen and
helium. It has numerous moons.

Uranus

The seventh planet from the sun, Uranus is an oddball. It’s the only giant planet whose equator is nearly at right angles to its orbit — it basically
orbits on its side. Astronomers think the planet collided with some other planet-size object long ago, causing the tilt. The tilt causes extreme seasons
that last 20-plus years, and the sun beats down on one pole or the other for 84 Earth-years. Uranus is about the same size as Neptune. Methane in the
atmosphere gives Uranus its blue-green tint. It has numerous moons and faint rings.
Neptune

The eighth planet from the sun, Neptune is known for strong winds — sometimes faster than the speed of sound. Neptune is far out and cold. The
planet is more than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth. It has a rocky core. Neptune was the first planet to be predicted to exist by using math,
before it was detected. Irregularities in the orbit of Uranus led French astronomer Alexis Bouvard to suggest some other might be exerting a
gravitational tug. German astronomer Johann Galle used calculations to help find Neptune in a telescope. Neptune is about 17 times as mass .

Title

The effectiveness of home visits by specialist nurses in preventing infections for those patients undergoing home immunoglobulin
therapy as opposed to those not receiving such home visits.

 This title immediately tells us a lot about the proposed research study:

 We now know what we are looking at - how effective are home visits in preventing infections to those having their therapy at
home rather than in hospital.
 We know the subjects - those having therapy at home (in this case it is concerned with immunoglobulin replacement therapy
for those people with an immune deficiency.
 We can probably guess that it is going to be a quantitative study (survey study, rather than experimental), as it is comparing
two variables - those not receiving home visits and those who are receiving home visits.
 Consequently, we will want a large sample.
 Data collection will involve comparing the rates of infection between the two groups.
 Data analysis will be statistical.

So you can see how important a clear and full title is at this stage - we now know a lot about the research without actually having read
the proposal.

Planets. These planets are Mercury, Earth, Venus and Mars. The four planets furthest
from the Sun are known as the Outer Planets, or the Gas