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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 nebular hypothesis was first proposed in 1734 by Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg [6] and later expanded upon by Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant in 1755. A similar hypothesis was independently formulated by the Frenchman Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1796. [7]
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]
Nichol turned to popular lecturing and authored a number of popular and successful books about astronomy, especially championing the nebular hypothesis. [ 2 ] [ 4 ] In 1841 George Eliot wrote: [ 1 ] I have been revelling in Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens and Phenomena of the Solar System , and have been in imagination winging my flight ...
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 ...
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]
Laplace completed the theory of the planets, publishing from 1798 to 1825. The early origins of the solar nebular model of planetary formation had begun. Edmond Halley succeeded Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal in England and succeeded in predicting the return of the comet that bears his name in 1758.
The Chamberlin–Moulton planetesimal hypothesis was proposed in 1905 by geologist Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin and astronomer Forest Ray Moulton to describe the formation of the Solar System. It was proposed as a replacement for the Laplacian version of the nebular hypothesis that had prevailed since the 19th century.