Formation of the Solar System

Solar System

Formation of the Solar System

Many scientists believed that the solar system was formed when in space a cloud of gas and dust was disturbed, by the explosion of a close by star known as a supernova. This explosion made waves in space which compressed the cloud of gas and dust. The cloud starts to collapse after getting pressed, as gravity together pulled the gas and dust, and formed a solar nebula. Thus, the cloud began to spin as it collapsed (UCAR).

Picture of Solar System

Finally, as the cloud grew more hot and dense in the center, surrounded by a disk of gas and dust, which was hot in the center and cooler at the edges. And as the disk became thinner and thinner, particles started to stick together and form clumps, where few clumps got bigger, forming particles while, small clumps stuck to them, ultimately forming planets or moons (UCAR).

Thus, as the materials condensed and clump into chunks of rock/metal in the inner solar system and while ice in the outer solar system and eventually formed the planets called planetestimals. The picture below shows small planetestimals forming a thin disk and orbiting the new Sun (UCAR).

Now near the center of the cloud, where planets like Earth formed, materials that were only rocky could stand the great heat. On the other hand, icy matter was settled in the outer regions of the disk along with rocky material, forming giant planets such as Jupiter.

It was the initial first billion years that there was still a significant amount of large pieces of rock and ice flying around the solar system. These were the materials that had not accreted into a planet, until about 3.8 billion years ago rife in collisions were formed. The following picture shows the same (The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2004).