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Although the surface conditions on Venus are no longer hospitable to any Earth-like life that may have formed before this event, there is speculation on the possibility that life exists in the upper cloud layers of Venus, 50 km (30 mi) up from the surface, where the atmospheric conditions are the most Earth-like in the Solar System, [105] with ...
There is evidence that the formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. [ 1 ] Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and ...
The geological history of the Earth follows the major geological events in Earth's past based on the geological time scale, a system of chronological measurement based on the study of the planet's rock layers (stratigraphy). Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left ...
The hemispheric view of Venus, as revealed by more than a decade of radar investigations culminating in the 1990–1994 Magellan mission, is centered at 180 degrees east longitude. The geology of Venus is the scientific study of the surface, crust, and interior of the planet Venus. Within the Solar System, it is the one nearest to Earth and ...
Earth formed in this manner about 4.54 billion years ago (with an uncertainty of 1%) [25] [26] [4] and was largely completed within 10–20 million years. [27] In June 2023, scientists reported evidence that the planet Earth may have formed in just three million years, much faster than the 10−100 million years thought earlier.
The most widely accepted model of planetary formation is known as the nebular hypothesis. This model posits that, 4.6 billion years ago, the Solar System was formed by the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud spanning several light-years. Many stars, including the Sun, were formed within this collapsing cloud.
The Solar System is believed to have formed according to the nebular hypothesis, first proposed in 1755 by Immanuel Kant and independently formulated by Pierre-Simon Laplace. [2] This theory holds that 4.6 billion years ago the Solar System formed from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud. This initial cloud was likely several ...
Historical models of the Solar System. Approximate sizes of the planets relative to each other. Outward from the Sun, the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Jupiter's diameter is about 11 times that of the Earth's and the Sun's diameter is about 10 times Jupiter's.