Usage examples (13)

• It was a tiny blip, settling down feather-light toward the surface of the snowball protoplanet.
• He cut in maximum magnification on the screens, and the surface of the little protoplanet of frozen gases leaped up toward him.
• New close-up images of Pallas from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the second largest asteroid in the solar system appears to be a protoplanet, as well.
• In the scientific community a widespread theory is that the moon was created when a protoplanet called Theia collided with Earth, and that that was also the catalyst...