In 2003, which planet passed 55.76 million km from earth, the closest since the Stone Age?
Terrestrial planet Terrestrial planet A terrestrial planet, telluric planet, or rocky planet is a planet that is composed primarily of silicate rocks or metals. Within the Solar System, the terrestrial planets are the inner planets closest to the Sun, i.e. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. The terms "terrestrial planet" and "telluric planet" are derived from Latin words for Earth ("Terra" and "Tellus"), as these planets are, in terms of structure, "Earth-like". Terrestrial planets have a solid planetary surface, making them substantially different from the larger giant planets, which are composed mostly of some combination of hydrogen, helium, and water existing in various
Age of the Earth had trouble accepting such a short age for Earth. For biologists, even 100 million years seemed much too short to be plausible. In Darwin's theory of evolution, the process of random heritable variation with cumulative selection requires great durations of time. (According to modern biology, the total evolutionary history from the beginning of life to today has taken place since 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago, the amount of time which passed since the last universal ancestor of all living organisms as shown by geological dating.) In a lecture in 1869, Darwin's great advocate, Thomas H. Huxley, attacked Thomson's calculations,