Formation and evolution of the Solar System

The nebular hypothesis says that the Solar System formed from the gravitational collapse of a fragment of a giant cold molecular cloud impacted by solar winds. In roughly 5 billion years, the Sun will cool and expand outward to many times its current diameter, before casting off its outer layers as a planetary nebula. In the far distant future, the gravity of passing stars will gradually reduce the Sun’s retinue of planets. Ultimately, over the course of tens of billions of years, it is likely that the sun will be left with none of the original bodies in orbit around it.

About Formation and evolution of the Solar System in brief

The nebular hypothesis says that the Solar System formed from the gravitational collapse of a fragment of a giant cold molecular cloud impacted by solar winds. In roughly 5 billion years, the Sun will cool and expand outward to many times its current diameter, before casting off its outer layers as a planetary nebula. In the far distant future, the gravity of passing stars will gradually reduce the Sun’s retinue of planets. Some planets will be destroyed, others ejected into interstellar space. Ultimately, over the course of tens of billions of years, it is likely that the sun will be left with none of the original bodies in orbit around it. The composition of the Sun was about the same as that of the today’s Sun, along with trace amounts of lithium and helium, forming about 98% of its mass. The remaining 2% of the mass consisted of heavier elements that were created by nucleosynthesis in earlier generations of stars. The oldest elements ejected into the interstellar medium, they are thought to be the oldest life in the universe. The first recorded use of the term \”Solar System\” dates from 1704. The current standard theory for Solar System formation has fallen into and out of favour since its formulation by Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, and Pierre-Simon Laplace in the 18th century. The most significant criticism of the hypothesis was its apparent inability to explain the Sun’s relative lack of angular momentum when compared to the planets. However, since the early 1980s studies of young stars have shown them to be surrounded by cool discs of dust and gas, exactly as the nebular hypotheses predicts, which has led to its re-acceptance.

The Sun’s energy comes from nuclear fusion reactions in its core, fusing hydrogen into helium. When a red giant finally casts off itsouter layers, these elements would then be recycled to form other star systems. This concept had developed for millennia, but was not widely accepted until the end of the 17th century, when Fred Hoyle argued that evolved stars created many elements heavier than hydrogen and helium in their cores. For almost all of that time, there was no attempt to link such theories to the existence of a Solar System. This is simply because it was not generally thought that the solar System, in the sense we now understand it, existed. It was not until the 1950s and the discovery of extrasolar planets in the 1990s that the model has been both challenged and refined to account for new observations. The Solar System has evolved considerably since its initial formation. Collisions between bodies have occurred continually up to the present day and have been central to the evolution of the solar system. The positions of the planets might have shifted due to gravitational interactions. This planetary migration is now thought to have been responsible for much of the Solar system’s early evolution. It is thought that this planetary migration has contributed to the formation of many moons, such as Earth’s Moon, which may be the result of giant collisions with their parent planets.

Related posts:

Nebular hypothesis Helium Solar System Dwarf planet