History of Solar

System formation
and evolution
hypotheses
Pierre-Simon Laplace, one of the originators of the
nebular hypothesis

The history of scientific thought about the

Formation and evolution of the Solar
System begins with the Copernican
Revolution. The first recorded use of the
term "Solar System" dates from 1704.[1][2]

Contemporary view
The most widely accepted theory of
planetary formation, known as the nebular
hypothesis, maintains that 4.6 billion years
ago, the Solar System formed from the
gravitational collapse of a giant molecular
cloud which was light years across.
Several stars, including the Sun, formed
within the collapsing cloud. The gas that
formed the Solar System was slightly more
massive than the Sun itself. Most of the
mass collected in the centre, forming the
Sun; the rest of the mass flattened into a
protoplanetary disc, out of which the
planets and other bodies in the Solar
System formed.
There are, however, arguments against this
hypothesis.

Formation hypothesis
French philosopher and mathematician
René Descartes was the first to propose a
model for the origin of the Solar System in
his Le Monde (ou Traité de lumière) which
he wrote in 1632 and 1633 and for which
he delayed publication because of the
Inquisition and it was published only after
his death in 1664. In his view, the Universe
was filled with vortices of swirling
particles and the Sun and planets had
condensed from a particularly large vortex
that had somehow contracted, which
explained the circular motion of the
planets and was on the right track with
condensation and contraction. However,
this was before Newton's theory of gravity
and we now know matter does not behave
in this fashion.[3]

Artist's conception of a protoplanetary disc

The vortex model of 1944,[3] formulated by

German physicist and philosopher Baron
Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, which
harkens back to the Cartesian model,
involved a pattern of turbulence-induced
eddies in a Laplacian nebular disc. In it a
suitable combination of clockwise rotation
of each vortex and anti-clockwise rotation
of the whole system can lead to individual
elements moving around the central mass
in Keplerian orbits so there would be little
dissipation of energy due to the overall
motion of the system but material would
be colliding at high relative velocity in the
inter-vortex boundaries and in these
regions small roller-bearing eddies would
coalesce to give annular condensations. It
was much criticized as turbulence is a
phenomenon associated with disorder and
would not spontaneously produce the
highly ordered structure required by the
hypothesis. As well, it does not provide a
solution to the angular momentum
problem and does not explain lunar
formation nor other very basic
characteristics of the Solar System.[4]

The Weizsäcker model was modified[3] in

1948 by Dutch theoretical physicist Dirk
Ter Haar, in that regular eddies were
discarded and replaced by random
turbulence which would lead to a very
thick nebula where gravitational instability
would not occur. He concluded the planets
must have formed by accretion and
explained the compositional difference
(solid and liquid planets) as due to the
temperature difference between the inner
and outer regions, the former being hotter
and the latter being cooler, so only
refractories (non-volatiles) condensed in
the inner region. A major difficulty is that in
this supposition turbulent dissipation
takes place in a time scale of only about a
millennium which does not give enough
time for planets to form.

The nebular hypothesis was first proposed

in 1734 by Emanuel Swedenborg[5] and
later elaborated and expanded upon by
Immanuel Kant in 1755. A similar theory
was independently formulated by Pierre-
Simon Laplace in 1796.[6]

In 1749, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de

Buffon conceived the idea that the planets
were formed when a comet collided with
the Sun, sending matter out to form the
planets. However, Laplace refuted this idea
in 1796, showing that any planets formed
in such a way would eventually crash into
the Sun. Laplace felt that the near-circular
orbits of the planets were a necessary
consequence of their formation.[7] Today,
comets are known to be far too small to
have created the Solar System in this
way.[7]
In 1755, Immanuel Kant speculated that
observed nebulae may in fact be regions
of star and planet formation. In 1796,
Laplace elaborated by arguing that the
nebula collapsed into a star, and, as it did
so, the remaining material gradually spun
outward into a flat disc, which then formed
the planets.[7]

Alternative theories

However plausible it may appear at first

sight, the nebular hypothesis still faces the
obstacle of angular momentum; if the Sun
had indeed formed from the collapse of
such a cloud, the planets should be
rotating far more slowly. The Sun, though it
contains almost 99.9 percent of the
system's mass, contains just 1 percent of
its angular momentum.[8] This means that
the Sun should be spinning much more
rapidly.

Tidal theory

Attempts to resolve the angular

momentum problem led to the temporary
abandonment of the nebular hypothesis in
favour of a return to "two-body" theories.[7]
For several decades, many astronomers
preferred the tidal or near-collision
hypothesis put forward by James Jeans in
1917, in which the planets were
considered to have been formed due to the
approach of some other star to the Sun.
This near-miss would have drawn large
amounts of matter out of the Sun and the
other star by their mutual tidal forces,
which could have then condensed into
planets.[7] However, in 1929 astronomer
Harold Jeffreys countered that such a
near-collision was massively unlikely.[7]
Objections to the hypothesis were also
raised by the American astronomer Henry
Norris Russell, who showed that it ran into
problems with angular momentum for the
outer planets, with the planets struggling
to avoid being reabsorbed by the Sun.[9]
The Chamberlin-Moulton model

Forest Moulton in 1900 had also shown

that the nebular hypothesis was
inconsistent with observations because of
the angular momentum. Moulton and
Chamberlin in 1904 originated the
planetesimal hypothesis[10] (see
Chamberlin–Moulton planetesimal
hypothesis). Along with many astronomers
of the day they came to believe the
pictures of "spiral nebulas" from the Lick
Observatory were direct evidence of
forming solar systems. These turned out
to be galaxies instead but the Shapley-
Curtis debate about these was still 16
years in the future. One of the most
fundamental issues in the history of
astronomy was distinguishing between
nebulas and galaxies.

Moulton and Chamberlin suggested that a

star had passed close to the Sun early in
its life to cause tidal bulges and that this,
along with the internal process that leads
to solar prominences, resulted in the
ejection of filaments of matter from both
stars. While most of the material would
have fallen back, part of it would remain in
orbit. The filaments cooled into numerous,
tiny, solid fragments, ‘planetesimals’, and a
few larger protoplanets. This model
received favourable support for about 3
decades but passed out of favour by the
late '30s and was discarded in the '40s by
the realization it was incompatible with the
angular momentum of Jupiter, but a part
of it, planetesimal accretion, was
retained.[3]

Lyttleton's scenario[3]

In 1937 and 1940, Ray Lyttleton postulated

that a companion star to the Sun collided
with a passing star. Such a scenario was
already suggested and rejected by Henry
Russell in 1935. Lyttleton showed
terrestrial planets were too small to
condense on their own so suggested one
very large proto-planet broke in two
because of rotational instability, forming
Jupiter and Saturn, with a connecting
filament from which the other planets
formed. A later model, from 1940 and
1941, involves a triple star system, a binary
plus the Sun, in which the binary merges
and later breaks up because of rotational
instability and escapes from the system
leaving a filament that formed between
them to be captured by the Sun.
Objections of Lyman Spitzer apply to this
model also.

Band-structure model
In 1954, 1975, and 1978[11] Swedish
astrophysicist Hannes Alfvén included
electromagnetic effects in equations of
particle motions, and angular momentum
distribution and compositional differences
were explained. In 1954 he first proposed
the band structure in which he
distinguished an A-cloud, containing
mostly helium, but with some solid-
particle impurities ("meteor rain"), a B-
cloud, with mostly hydrogen, a C-cloud,
having mainly carbon, and a D-cloud, made
mainly of silicon and iron. Impurities in the
A-cloud form Mars and the Moon (later
captured by Earth), in the B-cloud they
condense into Mercury, Venus, and Earth,
in the C-cloud they condense into the outer
planets, and Pluto and Triton may have
formed from the D-cloud.

Interstellar cloud theory

In 1943, the Soviet astronomer Otto

Schmidt proposed that the Sun, in its
present form, passed through a dense
interstellar cloud, emerging enveloped in a
cloud of dust and gas, from which the
planets eventually formed. This solved the
angular momentum problem by assuming
that the Sun's slow rotation was peculiar to
it, and that the planets did not form at the
same time as the Sun.[7] Extensions of the
model, together forming the Russian
school, include Gurevich and Lebedinsky
(in 1950), Safronov (in 1967,1969),
Safronov and Vityazeff (in 1985), Safronov
and Ruskol (in 1994), and Ruskol (in 1981),
among others[12] However, this hypothesis
was severely dented by Victor Safronov
who showed that the amount of time
required to form the planets from such a
diffuse envelope would far exceed the
Solar System's determined age.[7]

Ray Lyttleton modified the theory by

showing that a 3rd body was not
necessary and proposing that a
mechanism of line accretion described by
Bondi and Hoyle in 1944 would enable
cloud material to be captured by the star
(Williams and Cremin, 1968, loc. cit.)

Hoyle's hypothesis

In this model[3] (from 1944) the

companion went nova with ejected
material captured by the Sun and planets
forming from this material. In a version a
year later it was a supernova. In 1955 he
proposed a similar system to Laplace, and
with more mathematical detail in 1960. It
differs from Laplace in that a magnetic
torque occurs between the disk and the
Sun, which comes into effect immediately
or else more and more matter would be
ejected resulting in a much too massive
planetary system, one comparable to the
Sun. The torque causes a magnetic
coupling and acts to transfer angular
momentum from the Sun to the disk. The
magnetic field strength would have to be 1
gauss. The existence of torque depends
on magnetic lines of force being frozen
into the disk (a consequence of a well-
known MHD (magnetohydrodynamic)
theorem on frozen-in lines of force). As the
solar condensation temperature when the
disk was ejected could not be much more
than 1000 degrees K., a number of
refractories must be solid, probably as fine
smoke particles, which would grow with
condensation and accretion. These
particles would be swept out with the disk
only if their diameter at the Earth's orbit
was less than 1 meter so as the disk
moved outward a subsidiary disk
consisting of only refractories remains
behind where the terrestrial planets would
form. The model is in good agreement
with the mass and composition of the
planets and angular momentum
distribution provided the magnetic
coupling is an acceptable idea, but not
explained are twinning, the low mass of
Mars and Mercury, and the planetoid belts.
It was Alfvén who formulated the concept
of frozen-in magnetic field lines.

Kuiper's theory

Gerard Kuiper (in 1944)[3] argued, like Ter

Haar, that regular eddies would be
impossible and postulated that large
gravitational instabilities might occur in
the solar nebula, forming condensations.
In this, the solar nebula could be either co-
genetic with the Sun or captured by it.
Density distribution would determine what
could form: either a planetary system or a
stellar companion. The 2 types of planets
were assumed to be due to the Roche
limit. No explanation was offered for the
Sun's slow rotation which Kuiper saw as a
larger G-star problem.

Whipple's theory

In Fred Whipple's 1948 scenario[3] a smoke

cloud about 60,000 AU in diameter and
with 1 solar mass (M☉) contracts and
produces the Sun. It has a negligible
angular momentum thus accounting for
the Sun's similar property. This smoke
cloud captures a smaller one with a large
angular momentum. The collapse time for
the large smoke and gas nebula is about
100 million years and the rate is slow at
first, increasing in later stages. The planets
would condense from small clouds
developed in, or captured by, the 2nd
cloud, the orbits would be nearly circular
because accretion would reduce
eccentricity due to the influence of the
resisting medium, orbital orientations
would be similar because the small cloud
was originally small and the motions
would be in a common direction. The
protoplanets might have heated up to such
high degrees that the more volatile
compounds would have been lost and the
orbital velocity decreases with increasing
distance so that the terrestrial planets
would have been more affected. The
weaknesses of this scenario are that
practically all the final regularities are
introduced as a priori assumptions and
most of the hypothesizing was not
supported by quantitative calculations. For
these reasons it did not gain wide
acceptance.

Urey's model

American chemist Harold Urey, who

founded cosmochemistry, put forward a
scenario[3] in 1951, 1952, 1956, and 1966
based largely on meteorites and using
Chandrasekhar's stability equations and
obtained density distribution in the gas
and dust disk surrounding the primitive
Sun. In order that volatile elements like
mercury could be retained by the terrestrial
planets he postulated a moderately thick
gas and dust halo shielding the planets
from the Sun. In order to form diamonds,
pure carbon crystals, Moon-size objects,
gas spheres that became gravitationally
unstable, would have to form in the disk
with the gas and dust dissipating at a later
stage. Pressure fell as gas was lost and
diamonds were converted to graphite,
while the gas became illuminated by the
Sun. Under these conditions considerable
ionization would be present and the gas
would be accelerated by magnetic fields,
hence the angular momentum could be
transferred from the Sun. He postulated
that these lunar-size bodies were
destroyed by collisions, with the gas
dissipating, leaving behind solids collected
at the core, with the resulting smaller
fragments pushed far out into space and
the larger fragments staying behind and
accreting into planets. He suggested the
Moon was just such a surviving core.

Protoplanet theory

In 1960, 1963, and 1978,[13] W. H. McCrea

proposed the protoplanet theory, in which
the Sun and planets individually coalesced
from matter within the same cloud, with
the smaller planets later captured by the
Sun's larger gravity.[7] It includes fission in
a protoplanetary nebula and there is no
solar nebula. Agglomerations of floccules
(which are presumed to compose the
supersonic turbulence assumed to occur
in the interstellar material from which
stars are born) formed the Sun and
protoplanets, the latter splitting to form
planets. The 2 portions can not remain
gravitationally bound to each other, are at
a mass ratio of at least 8 to 1, and for
inner planets they go into independent
orbits while for outer planets one of the
portions exits the Solar System. The inner
protoplanets were Venus-Mercury and
Earth-Mars. The moons of the greater
planets were formed from "droplets" in the
neck connecting the 2 portions of the
dividing protoplanet and these droplets
could account for some of the asteroids.
Terrestrial planets would have no major
moons which does not account for Luna. It
predicts certain observations such as the
similar angular velocity of Mars and Earth
with similar rotation periods and axial tilts.
In this scheme there are 6 principal
planets: 2 terrestrial, Venus and Earth, 2
major, Jupiter and Saturn, and 2 outer,
Uranus and Neptune; and 3 lesser planets:
Mercury, Mars, and Pluto.
This theory has a number of problems,
such as explaining the fact that the
planets all orbit the Sun in the same
direction, which would appear highly
unlikely if they were each individually
captured.[7]

Cameron's hypothesis

In American astronomer Alastair G. W.

Cameron's hypothesis (from 1962 and
1963),[3] the protosun has a mass of about
1–2 Suns with a diameter of around
100,000 AU is gravitationally unstable,
collapses, and breaks up into smaller
subunits. The magnetic field is of the order
of 1/100,000 gauss. During the collapse
the magnetic lines of force are twisted.
The collapse is fast and is done by the
dissociation of H molecules followed by
the ionization of H and the double
ionization of He. Angular momentum leads
to rotational instability which produces a
Laplacean disk. At this stage radiation will
remove excess energy and the disk will be
quite cool in a relatively short period
(about 1 mln. yrs.) and the condensation
into what Whipple calls cometismals takes
place. Aggregation of these produces
giant planets which in turn produce disks
during their formation from which evolve
into lunar systems. The formation of
terrestrial planets, comets, and asteroids
involved disintegration, heating, melting,
solidification, etc. He also formulated the
Big Splat or Giant Impactor Hypothesis for
the origin of the Moon.

Capture theory

The capture theory, proposed by Michael

Mark Woolfson in 1964, posits that the
Solar System formed from tidal
interactions between the Sun and a low-
density protostar. The Sun's gravity would
have drawn material from the diffuse
atmosphere of the protostar, which would
then have collapsed to form the
planets.[14] However, the capture theory
predicts a different age for the Sun than
for the planets, whereas the similar ages
of the Sun and the rest of the Solar System
indicate that they formed at roughly the
same time.[15]

As captured planets would have initially

eccentric orbits Dormand and Woolfson in
1974 and 1977 and Woolfson[16] proposed
the possibility of a collision. A filament is
thrown out by a passing proto-star which
is captured by the Sun and planets form
from it. In this there were 6 original
planets, corresponding to 6 point-masses
in the filament, with planets A and B, the 2
innermost, colliding, the former at twice
the mass of Neptune, and ejecting out of
the Solar System, and the latter at 1/3 the
mass of Uranus, and splitting into Earth
and Venus. Mars and the Moon are former
moons of A. Mercury is either a fragment
of B or an escaped moon of A. The
collision also produced the asteroid belt
and the comets.

T.J.J. See was an American astronomer

and Navy Captain who at one time worked
under Ellery Hale at the Lowell
Observatory. He had a cult following
largely because of his many (some 60)
articles in Popular Astronomy but also in
Astronomische Nachrichte (Astronomical
News) (mostly in English). While at the
USNO's Mare Island, Cal. station, he
developed a model which he called
capture theory, published in 1910, in his
"Researches on the Evolution of the Stellar
Systems: v. 2. The capture theory of
cosmical evolution, founded on dynamical
principles and illustrated by phenomena
observed in the spiral nebulae, the
planetary system, the double and multiple
stars and clusters and the star-clouds of
the Milky Way", which proposed that the
planets formed in the outer Solar System
and were captured by the Sun; the moons
were formed in thus manner and were
captured by the planets. This caused a
feud with Forest Moulton, who co-
developed the planetesimal hypothesis. A
preview was presented in 1909 at a
meeting of the ASP (Astronomical Society
of the Pacific) at the Chabot Observatory
in Oakland, Cal., and newspaper headlines
blared "Prof. See's Paper Causes
Sensation" (San Francisco Call) and
"Scientists in Furore Over Nebulae" (San
Francisco Examiner). Our current
knowledge of dynamics makes capture
most unlikely as it requires special
conditions.[10]

Solar fission
Swiss astronomer Louis Jacot (in 1951,
1962, 1981),[17] like Weisacker and Ter
Haar, continued the Cartesian idea of
vortices but proposed a hierarchy of
vortices or vortices within vortices, i.e., a
lunar system vortex, a Solar System
vortex, and a galactic vortex. He put
forward the notion that planetary orbits are
spirals, not circles or ellipses. Jacot also
proposed the expansion of galaxies (stars
move away from the hub), and that moons
move away from their planets.

He also maintained that planets were

expelled, one at a time, from the Sun,
specifically from an equatorial bulge
caused by rotation, and that one of them
shattered in this expulsion leaving the
asteroid belt. The Kuiper Belt was
unknown at the time, but presumably it,
too, would be the result of the same kind
of shattering. The moons, like the planets,
originated as equatorial expulsions, but, of
course, from their parent planets, with
some shattering, leaving the rings, and
Earth is supposed to eventually expel
another moon.

In this model there were 4 phases to the

planets: no rotation and keeping the same
side to the Sun "as Mercury does now"
(we've known, of course, since 1965, that it
doesn't), very slow, accelerated, and finally,
daily rotation.

He explained the differences between

inner and outer planets and inner and
outer moons through vortex behaviour.
Mercury's eccentric orbit was explained by
its recent expulsion from the Sun and
Venus' slow rotation as its being in the
"slow rotation phase", having been
expelled second to last.

The Tom Van Flandern model[18][19][20][21]

was first proposed in 1993 in the first
edition of his book. In the revised version
from 1999 and later, the original Solar
System had 6 pairs of twin planets each
fissioned off from the equatorial bulges of
an overspinning Sun (outward centrifugal
forces exceed the inward gravitational
force) at different times so having
different temperatures, sizes, and
compositions, and having condensed
thereafter with the nebular disk dissipating
after some 100 million years, with 6
planets exploding. Four of these were
helium dominated, fluid, and unstable
(helium class planets). These were V
(Bellatrix) (V standing for the 5th planet,
the first 4 including Mercury and Mars), K
(Krypton), T (transneptunian), and Planet
X. In these cases, the smaller moons
exploded because of tidal stresses leaving
the 4 component belts of the 2 major
planetoid zones. Planet LHB-A, the
explosion for which is postulated to have
caused the Late Heavy Bombardment
(about 4 eons ago), was twinned with
Jupiter, and LHB-B, the explosion for which
is postulated to have caused another LHB,
was twinned with Saturn. In planets LHB-A,
Jupiter, LHB-B, and Saturn, being gigantic,
Jovian planets, the inner and smaller
partner in each pair was subjected to
enormous tidal stresses causing it to blow
up. The explosions took place before they
were able to fission off moons. As the 6
were fluid they left no trace. Solid planets
fission off only one moon and Mercury
was a moon of Venus but drifted away
because of the Sun's gravitational
influence. Mars was a moon of Bellatrix.

One major argument against exploding

planets and moons is that there would not
be an energy source powerful enough to
cause such explosions.

Herndon's model

In J. Marvin Herndon's model,[22] inner

(large-core) planets form by condensation
and raining-out from within giant gaseous
protoplanets at high pressures and high
temperatures. Earth's complete
condensation included a c. 300 Earth-
mass gas/ice shell that compressed the
rocky kernel to about 66% of Earth's
present diameter (Jupiter equates to about
300 Earth masses, which equals c. 2000
trillion trillion kg; Earth is at about 6 trillion
trillion kg). T Tauri (see T Tauri type stars)
eruptions of the Sun stripped the gases
away from the inner planets. Mercury was
incompletely condensed and a portion of
its gases were stripped away and
transported to the region between Mars
and Jupiter, where it fused with in-falling
oxidized condensate from the outer
reaches of the Solar System and formed
the parent material for ordinary chondrite
meteorites, the Main-Belt asteroids, and
veneer for the inner planets, especially
Mars. The differences between the inner
planets are primarily the consequence of
different degrees of protoplanetary
compression. There are two types of
responses to decompression-driven
planetary volume increases: cracks, which
form to increase surface area, and folding,
creating mountain ranges, to
accommodate changes in curvature.

This planetary formation theory represents

an extension of the Whole-Earth
Decompression Dynamics (WEDD)
model,[23] which includes natural nuclear-
fission reactors in planetary cores;
Herndon elaborates, expounds, and
elucidates it in 11 articles in Current
Science from 2005 to 2013 and in five
books published from 2008 to 2012. He
refers to his model as "indivisible" –
meaning that the fundamental aspects of
Earth are connected logically and causally,
and can be deduced from its early
formation as a Jupiter-like giant.

In 1944 the German chemist and physicist

Arnold Eucken considered the
thermodynamics of Earth condensing and
raining-out within a giant protoplanet at
pressures of 100–1000 atm. In the 1950s
and early 1960s discussion of planetary
formation at such pressures took place,
but Cameron's 1963 low-pressure (c. 4–10
atm.) model largely supplanted the idea.

Classification of the theories

Jeans, in 1931, divided the various models

into 2 groups: those where the material for
planet formation came from the Sun and
those where it didn't and may be
concurrent or consecutive.[24]

William McCrea, in 1963, divided them into

2 groups also: those that relate the
formation of the planets to the formation
of the Sun and those where it is
independent of the formation of the Sun,
where the planets form after the Sun
becomes a normal star.[24]

Ter Haar and Cameron[25] distinguished

between those theories that consider a
closed system, which is a development of
the Sun and possibly a solar envelope, that
starts with a protosun rather than the Sun
itself, and state that Belot calls these
theories monistic; and those that consider
an open system, which is where there is an
interaction between the Sun and some
foreign body that is supposed to have
been the first step in the developments
leading to the planetary system, and state
that Belot calls these theories dualistic.

Hervé Reeves' classification[26] also

categorizes them as co-genetic with the
Sun or not but also as formed from altered
or unaltered stellar/interstellar material.
He as well recognizes 4 groups: 1) models
based on the solar nebula, originated by
Swedenborg, Kant, and Laplace in the
1700s; 2) the ones proposing a cloud
captured from interstellar space, major
proponents being Alfvén and Gustaf
Arrhenius (in 1978) and Alfvén and
Arrhenius; 3) the binary hypotheses which
propose that a sister star somehow
disintegrated and a portion of its
dissipating material was captured by the
Sun, principal hypothesizer being Lyttleton
in the '40s; 4) and the close-approach-
filament ideas of Jeans, Jeffreys, and
Woolfson and Dormand.

In Williams and Cremin[24] the categories

are: (1) models that regard the origin and
formation of the planets as being
essentially related to the Sun, with the 2
formation processes taking place
concurrently or consecutively, (2) models
that regard formation of the planets as
being independent of the formation
process of the Sun, the planets forming
after the Sun becomes a normal star; this
has 2 subcategories: a) where the material
for the formation of the planets is
extracted either from the Sun or another
star, b) where the material is acquired from
interstellar space. They conclude that the
best models are Hoyle's magnetic coupling
and McCrea's floccules.

Woolfson[27] recognized 1) monistic, which

included Laplace, Descartes, Kant, and
Weisacker, and 2) dualistc, which included
Leclerc (comte de Buffon), Chamberlin-
Moulton, Jeans, Jeffreys, and Schmidt-
Lyttleton.
Reemergence of the nebular
hypothesis

Beta Pictoris seen by the Hubble Space Telescope

In 1978, astronomer A. J. R. Prentice

revived the Laplacian nebular model in his
Modern Laplacian Theory by suggesting
that the angular momentum problem
could be resolved by drag created by dust
grains in the original disc which slowed
down the rotation in the centre.[7][28]
Prentice also suggested that the young
Sun transferred some angular momentum
to the protoplanetary disc and
planetesimals through supersonic
ejections understood to occur in T Tauri
stars.[7][29] However, his contention that
such formation would occur in toruses or
rings has been questioned, as any such
rings would disperse before collapsing
into planets.[7]

The birth of the modern widely accepted

theory of planetary formation—the Solar
Nebular Disk Model (SNDM)—can be
traced to the works of Soviet astronomer
Victor Safronov.[30] His book Evolution of
the protoplanetary cloud and formation of
the Earth and the planets,[31] which was
translated to English in 1972, had a long-
lasting effect on the way scientists
thought about the formation of the
planets.[32] In this book almost all major
problems of the planetary formation
process were formulated and some of
them solved. Safronov's ideas were further
developed in the works of George
Wetherill, who discovered runaway
accretion.[7] By the early 1980s, the nebular
hypothesis in the form of SNDM had come
back into favour, led by two major
discoveries in astronomy. First, a number
of apparently young stars, such as Beta
Pictoris, were found to be surrounded by
discs of cool dust, much as was predicted
by the nebular hypothesis. Second, the
Infrared Astronomical Satellite, launched
in 1983, observed that many stars had an
excess of infrared radiation that could be
explained if they were orbited by discs of
cooler material.

Outstanding issues

While the broad picture of the nebular

hypothesis is widely accepted,[33] many of
the details are not well understood and
continue to be refined.
The refined nebular model was developed
entirely on the basis of observations of the
Solar System because it was the only one
known until the mid-1990s. It was not
confidently assumed to be widely
applicable to other planetary systems,
although scientists were anxious to test
the nebular model by finding of
protoplanetary discs or even planets
around other stars.[34] As of August 30,
2013, the discovery of 941 extrasolar
planets[35] has turned up many surprises,
and the nebular model must be revised to
account for these discovered planetary
systems, or new models considered.
Among the extrasolar planets discovered
to date are planets the size of Jupiter or
larger but possessing very short orbital
periods of only a few hours. Such planets
would have to orbit very closely to their
stars; so closely that their atmospheres
would be gradually stripped away by solar
radiation.[36][37] There is no consensus on
how to explain these so-called hot
Jupiters, but one leading idea is that of
planetary migration, similar to the process
which is thought to have moved Uranus
and Neptune to their current, distant orbit.
Possible processes that cause the
migration include orbital friction while the
protoplanetary disk is still full of hydrogen
and helium gas[38] and exchange of
angular momentum between giant planets
and the particles in the protoplanetary
disc.[39][40][41]

The detailed features of the planets are

another problem. The solar nebula
hypothesis predicts that all planets will
form exactly in the ecliptic plane. Instead,
the orbits of the classical planets have
various (but small) inclinations with
respect to the ecliptic. Furthermore, for the
gas giants it is predicted that their
rotations and moon systems will also not
be inclined with respect to the ecliptic
plane. However, most gas giants have
substantial axial tilts with respect to the
ecliptic, with Uranus having a 98° tilt.[42]
The Moon being relatively large with
respect to the Earth and other moons
which are in irregular orbits with respect to
their planet is yet another issue. It is now
believed these observations are explained
by events which happened after the initial
formation of the Solar System.[43]

Solar evolution hypotheses

Attempts to isolate the physical source of
the Sun's energy, and thus determine when
and how it might ultimately run out, began
in the 19th century. At that time, the
prevailing scientific view on the source of
the Sun's heat was that it was generated
by gravitational contraction. In the 1840s,
astronomers J. R. Mayer and J. J.
Waterson first proposed that the Sun's
massive weight causes it to collapse in on
itself, generating heat, an idea expounded
upon in 1854 by both Hermann von
Helmholtz and Lord Kelvin, who further
elaborated on the idea by suggesting that
heat may also be produced by the impact
of meteors onto the Sun's surface.[44]
However, the Sun only has enough
gravitational potential energy to power its
luminosity by this mechanism for about
30 million years—far less than the age of
the Earth. (This collapse time is known as
the Kelvin–Helmholtz timescale.)[45]

Albert Einstein's development of the theory

of relativity in 1905 led to the
understanding that nuclear reactions could
create new elements from smaller
precursors, with the loss of energy. In his
treatise Stars and Atoms, Arthur Eddington
suggested that pressures and
temperatures within stars were great
enough for hydrogen nuclei to fuse into
helium; a process which could produce the
massive amounts of energy required to
power the Sun.[44] In 1935, Eddington went
further and suggested that other elements
might also form within stars.[46] Spectral
evidence collected after 1945 showed that
the distribution of the commonest
chemical elements, carbon, hydrogen,
oxygen, nitrogen, neon, iron etc., was fairly
uniform across the galaxy. This suggested
that these elements had a common
origin.[46] A number of anomalies in the
proportions hinted at an underlying
mechanism for creation. Lead has a higher
atomic weight than gold, but is far more
common. Hydrogen and helium (elements
1 and 2) are virtually ubiquitous yet lithium
and beryllium (elements 3 and 4) are
extremely rare.[46]
Red giants

While the unusual spectra of red giant

stars had been known since the 19th
century,[47] it was George Gamow who, in
the 1940s, first understood that they were
stars of roughly solar mass that had run
out of hydrogen in their cores and had
resorted to burning the hydrogen in their
outer shells. This allowed Martin
Schwarzschild to draw the connection
between red giants and the finite lifespans
of stars. It is now understood that red
giants are stars in the last stages of their
life cycles.
Fred Hoyle noted that, even while the
distribution of elements was fairly uniform,
different stars had varying amounts of
each element. To Hoyle, this indicated that
they must have originated within the stars
themselves. The abundance of elements
peaked around the atomic number for iron,
an element that could only have been
formed under intense pressures and
temperatures. Hoyle concluded that iron
must have formed within giant stars.[46]
From this, in 1945 and 1946, Hoyle
constructed the final stages of a star's life
cycle. As the star dies, it collapses under
its own weight, leading to a stratified chain
of fusion reactions: carbon-12 fuses with
helium to form oxygen-16; oxygen-16
fuses with helium to produce neon-20, and
so on up to iron.[48] There was, however, no
known method by which carbon-12 could
be produced. Isotopes of beryllium
produced via fusion were too unstable to
form carbon, and for three helium atoms
to form carbon-12 was so unlikely as to
have been impossible over the age of the
Universe. However, in 1952 the physicist
Ed Salpeter showed that a short enough
time existed between the formation and
the decay of the beryllium isotope that
another helium had a small chance to
form carbon, but only if their combined
mass/energy amounts were equal to that
of carbon-12. Hoyle, employing the
anthropic principle, showed that it must be
so, since he himself was made of carbon,
and he existed. When the matter/energy
level of carbon-12 was finally determined,
it was found to be within a few percent of
Hoyle's prediction.[49]

White dwarfs

The first white dwarf discovered was in the

triple star system of 40 Eridani, which
contains the relatively bright main
sequence star 40 Eridani A, orbited at a
distance by the closer binary system of the
white dwarf 40 Eridani B and the main
sequence red dwarf 40 Eridani C. The pair
40 Eridani B/C was discovered by William
Herschel on January 31, 1783;[50], p. 73 it
was again observed by Friedrich Georg
Wilhelm Struve in 1825 and by Otto
Wilhelm von Struve in 1851.[51][52] In 1910,
it was discovered by Henry Norris Russell,
Edward Charles Pickering and Williamina
Fleming that despite being a dim star, 40
Eridani B was of spectral type A, or
white.[53]

White dwarfs were found to be extremely

dense soon after their discovery. If a star
is in a binary system, as is the case for
Sirius B and 40 Eridani B, it is possible to
estimate its mass from observations of
the binary orbit. This was done for Sirius B
by 1910,[54] yielding a mass estimate of
0.94 M☉. (A more modern estimate is
1.00 M☉.)[55] Since hotter bodies radiate
more than colder ones, a star's surface
brightness can be estimated from its
effective surface temperature, and hence
from its spectrum. If the star's distance is
known, its overall luminosity can also be
estimated. Comparison of the two figures
yields the star's radius. Reasoning of this
sort led to the realization, puzzling to
astronomers at the time, that Sirius B and
40 Eridani B must be very dense. For
example, when Ernst Öpik estimated the
density of a number of visual binary stars
in 1916, he found that 40 Eridani B had a
density of over 25,000 times the Sun's,
which was so high that he called it
"impossible".[56]

Such densities are possible because white

dwarf material is not composed of atoms
bound by chemical bonds, but rather
consists of a plasma of unbound nuclei
and electrons. There is therefore no
obstacle to placing nuclei closer to each
other than electron orbitals—the regions
occupied by electrons bound to an atom—
would normally allow.[57] Eddington,
however, wondered what would happen
when this plasma cooled and the energy
which kept the atoms ionized was no
longer present.[58] This paradox was
resolved by R. H. Fowler in 1926 by an
application of the newly devised quantum
mechanics. Since electrons obey the Pauli
exclusion principle, no two electrons can
occupy the same state, and they must
obey Fermi–Dirac statistics, also
introduced in 1926 to determine the
statistical distribution of particles which
satisfy the Pauli exclusion principle.[59] At
zero temperature, therefore, electrons
could not all occupy the lowest-energy, or
ground, state; some of them had to occupy
higher-energy states, forming a band of
lowest-available energy states, the Fermi
sea. This state of the electrons, called
degenerate, meant that a white dwarf
could cool to zero temperature and still
possess high energy.

Planetary nebulae

Planetary nebulae are generally faint

objects, and none are visible to the naked
eye. The first planetary nebula discovered
was the Dumbbell Nebula in the
constellation of Vulpecula, observed by
Charles Messier in 1764 and listed as M27
in his catalogue of nebulous objects. To
early observers with low-resolution
telescopes, M27 and subsequently
discovered planetary nebulae somewhat
resembled the gas giants, and William
Herschel, discoverer of Uranus, eventually
coined the term 'planetary nebula' for
them, although, as we now know, they are
very different from planets.

The central stars of planetary nebulae are

very hot. Their luminosity, though, is very
low, implying that they must be very small.
Only once a star has exhausted all its
nuclear fuel can it collapse to such a small
size, and so planetary nebulae came to be
understood as a final stage of stellar
evolution. Spectroscopic observations
show that all planetary nebulae are
expanding, and so the idea arose that
planetary nebulae were caused by a star's
outer layers being thrown into space at the
end of its life.

Lunar origins hypotheses

George Darwin
Over the centuries, many scientific
hypotheses have been advanced
concerning the origin of Earth's Moon. One
of the earliest was the so-called binary
accretion model, which concluded that the
Moon accreted from material in orbit
around the Earth left over from its
formation. Another, the fission model, was
developed by George Darwin (son of
Charles Darwin), who noted that, as the
Moon is gradually receding from the Earth
at a rate of about 4 cm per year, so at one
point in the distant past it must have been
part of the Earth, but was flung outward by
the momentum of Earth's then–much
faster rotation. This hypothesis is also
supported by the fact that the Moon's
density, while less than Earth's, is about
equal to that of Earth's rocky mantle,
suggesting that, unlike the Earth, it lacks a
dense iron core. A third hypothesis, known
as the capture model, suggested that the
Moon was an independently orbiting body
that had been snared into orbit by Earth's
gravity.[60]

Apollo missions

However, these hypotheses were all

refuted by the late 1960s and early 1970s
Apollo lunar missions, which introduced a
stream of new scientific evidence;
specifically concerning the Moon's
composition, its age, and its history. These
lines of evidence contradict many
predictions made by these earlier
models.[60] The rocks brought back from
the Moon showed a marked decrease in
water relative to rocks elsewhere in the
Solar System, and also evidence of an
ocean of magma early in its history,
indicating that its formation must have
produced a great deal of energy. Also,
oxygen isotopes in lunar rocks showed a
marked similarity to those on Earth,
suggesting that they formed at a similar
location in the solar nebula. The capture
model fails to explain the similarity in
these isotopes (if the Moon had originated
in another part of the Solar System, those
isotopes would have been different), while
the co-accretion model cannot adequately
explain the loss of water (if the Moon
formed in a similar fashion to the Earth,
the amount of water trapped in its mineral
structure would also be roughly similar).
Conversely, the fission model, while it can
account for the similarity in chemical
composition and the lack of iron in the
Moon, cannot adequately explain its high
orbital inclination and, in particular, the
large amount of angular momentum in the
Earth–Moon system, more than any other
planet–satellite pair in the Solar
System.[60]

Giant impact hypothesis

For many years after Apollo, the binary

accretion model was settled on as the
best hypothesis for explaining the Moon's
origins, even though it was known to be
flawed. Then, at a conference in Kona,
Hawaii in 1984, a compromise model was
composed that accounted for all of the
observed discrepancies. Originally
formulated by two independent research
groups in 1976, the giant impact model
supposed that a massive planetary object,
the size of Mars, had collided with Earth
early in its history. The impact would have
melted Earth's crust, and the other planet's
heavy core would have sunk inward and
merged with Earth's. The superheated
vapour produced by the impact would
have risen into orbit around the planet,
coalescing into the Moon. This explained
the lack of water (the vapour cloud was
too hot for water to condense), the
similarity in composition (since the Moon
had formed from part of the Earth), the
lower density (since the Moon had formed
from the Earth's crust and mantle, rather
than its core), and the Moon's unusual
orbit (since an oblique strike would have
imparted a massive amount of angular
momentum to the Earth–Moon
system).[60]

Outstanding issues

However, the giant impact model has been

criticised for being too explanatory; it can
be expanded to explain any future
discoveries and as such, is unfalsifiable.
Also, many claim that much of the
material from the impactor would have
ended up in the Moon, meaning that the
isotope levels would be different, but they
are not. Also, while some volatile
compounds such as water are absent
from the Moon's crust, many others, such
as manganese, are not.[60]

Other natural satellites

While the co-accretion and capture models

are not currently accepted as valid
explanations for the existence of the
Moon, they have been employed to explain
the formation of other natural satellites in
the Solar System. Jupiter's Galilean
satellites are believed to have formed via
co-accretion,[61] while the Solar System's
irregular satellites, such as Triton, are all
believed to have been captured.[62]
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