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The nebular hypothesis is the most widely accepted model in the field of cosmogony to explain the formation and evolution of the Solar System (as well as other planetary systems). It suggests the Solar System is formed from gas and dust orbiting the Sun which clumped up together to form the planets.
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 ...
The nebular hypothesis says that the Solar System formed from the gravitational collapse of a fragment of a giant molecular cloud, [9] most likely at the edge of a Wolf-Rayet bubble. [10] The cloud was about 20 parsecs (65 light years) across, [9] while the fragments were roughly 1 parsec (three and a quarter light-years) across. [11]
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 .
1796 – Pierre Laplace re-states the nebular hypothesis for the formation of the Solar System from a spinning nebula of gas and dust. [125] 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. [126]
The nebular hypothesis of solar system formation describes how protoplanetary disks are thought to evolve into planetary systems. Electrostatic and gravitational interactions may cause the dust and ice grains in the disk to accrete into planetesimals .
1905 – Albert Einstein publishes the Special Theory of Relativity, positing that space and time are not separate continua, and demonstrating that mass and energy are interchangeable. 1912 – Henrietta Leavitt discovers the period-luminosity law for Cepheid variable stars, which becomes a crucial step in measuring distances to other galaxies.
Roche made a mathematical study of Laplace's nebular hypothesis and presented his results in a series of papers to the Academy of Montpellier from his appointment until 1877. The most important were on comets (1860) and the nebular hypothesis itself (1873). Roche's studies examined the effects of strong gravitational fields upon swarms of tiny ...