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The theory was developed by Immanuel Kant and published in his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755) and then modified in 1796 by Pierre Laplace. Originally applied to the Solar System, the process of planetary system formation is now thought to be at work throughout the universe.
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 gas that formed ...
Pierre-Simon Laplace, one of the originators of the nebular hypothesis. Ideas concerning the origin and fate of the world date from the earliest known writings; however, for almost all of that time, there was no attempt to link such theories to the existence of a "Solar System", simply because it was not generally thought that the Solar System, in the sense we now understand it, existed.
1796 – Pierre Laplace re-states the nebular hypothesis for the formation of the Solar System from a spinning nebula of gas and dust. [124] 1798 – Henry Cavendish accurately measures the gravitational constant in the laboratory, which allows the mass of the Earth to be derived, and hence the masses of all bodies in the Solar System. [125]
Bunch, Bryan, and Alexander Hellemans, The History of Science and Technology: A Browser's Guide to the Great Discoveries, Inventions, and the People Who Made Them from the Dawn of Time to Today. ISBN 0-618-22123-9; P. de Bernardis et al., astro-ph/0004404, Nature 404 (2000) 955–959. Horowitz, Wayne (1998). Mesopotamian cosmic geography ...
In cosmogony, the nebular hypothesis is the most widely accepted model explaining the formation and evolution of the Solar System. It was first proposed in 1734 by Emanuel Swedenborg . Originally applied only to our own Solar System , this method of planetary system formation is now thought to be at work throughout the universe .
This hypothesis remains the most widely accepted model in the study of the origin of planetary systems. According to Laplace's description of the hypothesis, the Solar System evolved from a globular mass of incandescent gas rotating around an axis through its centre of mass. As it cooled, this mass contracted, and successive rings broke off ...
[38] [39] The currently favored formation mechanism is that of the nebular hypothesis, which states that comets are probably a remnant of the original planetesimal "building blocks" from which the planets grew. [40] [41] [42] Astronomers think that comets originate in both the Oort cloud and the scattered disk. [43]