Origin of

the Solar
PREPARED BY: System
ARJIL F. MADRINO, LPT
Rival Theories •
Many theories have been
proposed since about four
centuries ago. Each has
weaknesses in explaining all
characteristics of the solar
system.
 Nebular Hypothesis
In the 1700s Emanuel
Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant,
and Pierre-Simon Laplace
independently thought of a
rotating gaseous cloud that cools
and contracts in the middle to
form the sun and the rest into a
disc that become the planets.
Thisnebular theory failed to
account for the distribution
of angular momentum in the
solar system.
.Encounter Hypotheses
Buffon’s(1749) Sun-comet
encounter that sent matter to
form planet;
.James Jeans’ (1917) sun-
star encounter that would
have drawn from the sun
matter that would condense
to planets,
T.C.Chamberlain and F. R.
Moulton’s (1904) planetesimal
hypothesis involving a star much
bigger than the Sun passing by the
Sun and draws gaseous filaments
from both out which planetisimals
were formed;
Ray Lyttleton’s (1940) sun’s
companion star colliding with
another to form a proto-
planet that breaks up to form
Jupiter and Saturn.
Otto Schmidt’s accretion theory
proposed that the Sun passed
through a dense interstellar cloud
and emerged with a dusty,
gaseous envelope that eventually
became the planets. However, it
cannot explain how the planets
and satellites were formed. The
time required to form the planets
exceeds the age of the solar
system.
M.M. Woolfson’s capture
theory (Figure 4) is a
variation of James Jeans’
near-collision hypothesis.
In this scenario, the Sun
drags from a near proto-
star a filament of material
which becomes the
planets
. Collisions between proto-
planets close to the Sun
produced the terrestrial
planets; condensations in the
filament produced the giant
planets and their satellites.
Different ages for the Sun and
planets is predicted by this
theory.
Protoplanet
Hypotheses
About 4.6 billion years ago,
in the Orion arm of the Milky
Way galaxy, a slowly-
rotating gas and dust cloud
dominated by hydrogen
and helium starts to
contract due to gravity
Asmost of the mass move to
the center to eventually
become a proto-Sun, the
remaining materials form a
disc that will eventually
become the planets and
momentum is transferred
outwards.
Due to collisions, fragments of dust
and solid matter begin sticking to
each other to form larger and
larger bodies from meter to
kilometer in size. These proto-
planets are accretions of frozen
water, ammonia, methane, silicon,
aluminum, iron, and other metals
in rock and mineral grains
enveloped in hydrogen and
helium.
High-speed collisions
with large objects
destroys much of the
mantle of Mercury, puts
Venus in retrograde
rotation.
Collisionof the Earth with
large object produces the
moon. This is supported by
the composition of the
moon very similar to the
Earth's Mantle
When the proto-Sun is
established as a star, its
solar wind blasts hydrogen,
helium, and volatiles from
the inner planets to beyond
Mars to form the gas giants
leaving behind a system
we know today.