Inferior and superior planets Inferior and superior planets In the Solar System, a planet is said to be inferior or interior with respect to another planet if its orbit lies inside the other planet's orbit around the Sun. In this situation, the latter planet is said to be superior to the former. In the reference frame of the Earth, in which the terms were originally used, the inferior planets are Mercury and Venus, while the superior planets are Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Dwarf planets like Ceres or Pluto and most asteroids are 'superior' in the sense that they almost all orbit outside
History of Solar System formation and evolution hypotheses itself. Most of the mass collected in the centre, forming the Sun; the rest of the mass flattened into a protoplanetary disc, out of which the planets and other bodies in the Solar System formed. There are, however, arguments against this hypothesis. French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was the first to propose a model for the origin of the Solar System in his "Le Monde" (ou Traité de lumière) which he wrote in 1632 and 1633 and for which he delayed publication because of the Inquisition and it was published only after his death in 1664. In his view,