Planet

A planet (Art by NASA)

A **Planet** is a name for a celestial body measuring from a few thousand km (usually 4 thousand kilometers in diameter) to hundreds of thousands of km. Planets can be rocky or gaseous and are the locations in the universe where animalistic and sapient life flourishes, such as Earth.

## Overview

Planets are the main objects in the universe, being mostly seen orbiting stars or wandering aimlessly through the shadow of space like orphan planets. Although it is rare to see, there are planets that orbit not stars but black holes.

## Description

There are several types of planets, such as rocky planets, dwarf planets, gaseous planets, exoplanets and orphan planets (aka rogue planet). Due to the force of gravity, when an asteroid starts to reach a very large size, the gravitational force crushes the asteroid leaving it in the form of a sphere, something similar happens with gaseous planets.

* **Rocky Planet**: A rocky planet is a spherical structure made of rocks like asteroids and meteors.
* **Dwarf Planet**: A dwarf planet is a rocky structure large enough not to be considered an asteroid, but too small to be considered a planet. The largest dwarf planet in the solar system is Pluto.
* **Gaseous Planet**: A gaseous planet is, as the name implies, a planet made largely of gas, with a solid core. When a gaseous planet gets too big, it becomes a dwarf star.
* **Exoplanet**: An exoplanet is an extrastellar planet, that is, a planet from another star system other than Earth's Solar System.
* **Orphan Planet**: An orphan planet is a planet that does not orbit any star and just wanders aimlessly through outer space.
* **Protoplanet**: A protoplanet is the condensation of matter that constitutes the initial phase in the evolution of a planet. It is an agglomeration of cosmic matter that may form a planet, due to its physical characteristics.
* **Moon**: A moon is an object that orbits a planet. A moon can range from an asteroid (like Deimos from the planet Mars) to a large asteroid (like Earth's moon Selene), and even a gaseous planet like the moon DISS 10d m.
* **Extrauniversal Planet**: Extrauniversal planets is a name for a theoretical object that is a planet from another universe. As physical laws vary from universe to universe, some planets may be larger than stars and galaxies in some Parallel Universes in the Multiverse.
* **Megastructure**: Megastructures are artificial planets or moons. These ships are as large as the Solar System itself, hundreds of millions of kilometers in diameter, with their core and energy source being a star like the sun or a white dwarf star.

## History

The planets were born a few million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars began to emerge. The planets were born through collisions between asteroid fragments and the accumulation of gas. Earth stands out within the universe for being considered God's most beautiful and diverse planet. However, it is said that it was not God who created the Earth, but rather just moving the pieces so it could be formed naturally.

## Myths and Legends

In ancient times, it was believed that the entire universe was a boundless ocean, with Earth, a realm, being the center of the universe, with planet Earth being the only planet. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, as well as all other planets in the solar system were considered stars.

## Trivia

* Although the exact number of planets in the universe is unknown, it is believed that there must be an approximate number of septillions, with the Milky Way Galaxy having only 100 or 200 billion planets, with 400 billion stars, with the universe having 10 sextillion stars.