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By 10 million years, gas in the protoplanetary disc has been blown away, and outer planet formation is likely complete. [38] 10 million – 100 million years 4.5–4.6 bya: Terrestrial planets and the Moon form. Giant impacts occur. Water delivered to Earth. [2] Main sequence 50 million years 4.5 bya: Sun becomes a main-sequence star. [32] 200 ...
The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young protostar orbited by a protoplanetary disk. Planets grow in this disk by the gradual accumulation of material driven by gravity, a process called accretion.
[31] [68] Searches as of 2011 have found that core accretion is likely the dominant formation mechanism. [68] Giant planet core formation is thought to proceed roughly along the lines of the terrestrial planet formation. [20] It starts with planetesimals that undergo runaway growth, followed by the slower oligarchic stage. [65]
French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was the first to propose a model for the origin of the Solar System in his book The World, written from 1629 to 1633.. In his view, the universe was filled with vortices of swirling particles, and both the Sun and planets had condensed from a large vortex that had contracted, which he thought could explain the circular motion of the plane
If formed in the gravity field of a planet as the planet is forming, a moon will orbit the planet in the same direction as the planet is rotating and is a regular moon. If an object is formed elsewhere and later captured into orbit by a planet's gravity, it can be captured into either a retrograde or prograde orbit depending on whether it first ...
Thus, the Sun occupies 0.00001% (1 part in 10 7) of the volume of a sphere with a radius the size of Earth's orbit, whereas Earth's volume is roughly 1 millionth (10 −6) that of the Sun. Jupiter, the largest planet, is 5.2 AU from the Sun and has a radius of 71,000 km (0.00047 AU; 44,000 mi), whereas the most distant planet, Neptune, is 30 AU ...
The "Mars problem" is a conflict between some simulations of the formation of the terrestrial planets which end with a 0.5–1.0 M E planet in its region, much larger than the actual mass of Mars: 0.107 M E, when begun with planetesimals distributed throughout the inner Solar System. Jupiter's grand tack resolves the Mars problem by limiting ...
The disk eventually disappears due to accretion onto the central star, planet formation, ejection by jets, and photoevaporation by ultraviolet radiation from the central star and nearby stars. [18] As a result, the young star becomes a weakly lined T Tauri star , which, over hundreds of millions of years, evolves into an ordinary Sun-like star ...