Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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]
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]
John Couch Adams (/ k uː tʃ / KOOTCH; 5 June 1819 – 21 January 1892) was a British mathematician and astronomer. He was born in Laneast , near Launceston, Cornwall , and died in Cambridge . His most famous achievement was predicting the existence and position of Neptune , using only mathematics.
c. 16th century BCE – Mesopotamian cosmology has a flat, circular Earth enclosed in a cosmic ocean. [1]c. 15th–11th century BCE – The Rigveda of Hinduism has some cosmological hymns, particularly in the late book 10, notably the Nasadiya Sukta which describes the origin of the universe, originating from the monistic Hiranyagarbha or "Golden Egg".
Aristarchus of Samos (/ ˌ æ r ə ˈ s t ɑːr k ə s /; Ancient Greek: Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ Σάμιος, Aristarkhos ho Samios; c. 310 – c. 230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the universe, with the Earth revolving around the Sun once a year and rotating about its axis once a day.
Einstein's theory was empirically verified in the Eddington experiment during the solar eclipse of May 29, 1919 when photographs showed the curvature of spacetime was bending starlight around the Sun. Astronomers generally quickly accepted that a large planet inside the orbit of Mercury could not exist, given the corrected equation of gravity.