Post

The basic idea is that we're finding more and more exoplanets, including ones that—on the basis of radius and mass—are surely rocky. But that's usually all we have, even though it's tempting to call them "super-Earths" or to otherwise attribute (intentionally or not) certain properties to them.

So, until/if we start imaging the surfaces of these worlds, what might we learn about them? Well, we argue that the Solar System's rocky worlds provide a useful template to start from. And that's the gist of the paper! So we start with Earth, Venus, Mars, Mercury, and the Moon.

A big part of the paper (and my career) is comparative planetology, the comparing of one world with another. So in this paper, we talk about how and when the crusts of these worlds developed. Those of Mars, Mercury, and the Moon are ancient; some of Earth is very recent. And Venus?? who tf knows