Formation of the solar system essays

Formation of the solar system essays The solar system was thought to have formed with the collapse of a giant gas cloud. The giant gas cloud was thought to have been spherical in shape because like everything else in the universe, it was spinning. This was probably due to the fact that the gas it was made up with came from the stars which were spinning too. The collapse was thought to have been started by the inconsistent rise and fall of the density of the cloud, there came a point of time where there was enough material (like water, hydrogen, helium and interstellar dust) to cause the cloud to collapse. The cloud rotates faster and faster in order to conserve its angular momentum and according to the laws of physics, the faster an object spins, the smaller it becomes. As a result, the cloud begins to contract too. The cloud spins faster and faster and it spins so fast that a strong outward centrifugal force is caused and it is unable to contract any smaller. A dense disc of gas spinning around the central lump is also formed as it is simpler for matter to follow the gravitational pull along the axis of rotation (of the lump) rather than perpendicular to it as that is where the contrasting centrifugal force is supreme. As the gas cloud contracts and rotates faster, the temperature of the dust and gas particles increases until the cloud is hot and dense enough for nuclear reactions to begin and thereby giving birth to a star. When nuclear fusion takes place, the hydrogen atoms combine to produce helium, and this process gives out immense amount of energy. The spin of the sun is also reduced as the solar radiation from the newborn star will blow away all light gassy elements which is within approximately 6.667 AU (10^12m) of it, forming the solar nebula. As the molecules of elements such as carbon and silicon knock against each other, they stick and gradually form tiny lumps. This process is extremely slow owing to the fact that the atoms and molecules hardly ever b ...