Our planet is made of continents and that makes us the oddball of the solar system. No other planet has continents like we do ... and it is unclear why.
NewsletterIf you were to arrive in our solar system never having seen it before, you'd be impressed with variety. Giant gas planets with rings, moons spanning from minuscule to enormous, icy comets that hurtle in from the edges, rocky planets all with varying amounts of atmospheres. It almost seems like no two planetsIt's Earth.
The rest of the planets are almost entirely basalt or something close, but Earth. No, earth hides most of its basalt surface under deep oceans, instead letting its freak flag fly with continental rocks showing off to any passersby.may exist on Earth because we have liquid water at the surface. Life might be a product of the abundant water and volcanism. The composition of the Earth's continents might be a product of life's interactions with rock.
There is still a lot unknown about the formation of our continents. We're pretty sure that no other planet has the silica-rich continental masses that Earth possesses. Mars might have a little bit of what geologists call "evolved" rocks . Venus could have a little bit as well. The Moon hasthat are a bit like continents except they formed from lighter minerals floating in a primordial magma ocean ... that and those highlands are mostly all the same stuff.
No planet has the complex melange of volcanic rocks, sediment, metamorphic rocks and cooled magma that are Earth's continents. The current theory, based on the ages of