EARTH SCIENCE

QUARTER 1

LESSON

UNIVERSE AND
SOLAR SYSTEM

THE SOLAR SYSTEM

THEORIES OF ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Nebular Hypothesis
Tidal Hypothesis
Planetesimal Hypothesis
Binary Star Hypothesis
Gas Dust Cloud Hypothesis

The Nebular Hypothesis

Proposed by the German philosophers Kant and
French mathematician Laplace.
The central idea of this hypothesis of the origin of
the solar system is that the Earth, planets and sun
originated from Nebula, or a spinning cloud of dust
which collapsed on its own gravity which caused it so
spin faster. A gaseous ring was separated from the
nebula which later on became the planets that we have
today while a dense clump of matter was formed at the
center called a proto-star which became the Sun.

The Nebular Hypothesis

A

Tidal Hypothesis
Proposed by Jeans and Jeffrey in 1925

B
C

D
E

The central idea of this hypothesis is

that large stars passed near the sun and
due to the gravitational pull a gaseous
tide was raised on the surface of the sun
and the star. As the star came nearer, the
tide increased in size and this gaseous
tide was detached when the star moved
away and this gaseous tide later formed
to be planets in our solar system.

Planetesimal Hypothesis

Proposed by Chamberlin and Moulton in 1904

This hypothesis centers on the idea that a disk shaped cloud of
gas and dust which was a remnant after the formation of the sun
began to clump together forming bodies of planetesimals. When
this planetesimals reached a size of about 1 km they began
attracting other floating bodies due their gravity. Eventually
these planetesimals got larger enough to form planets.

Planetesimal Hypothesis

Binary Star Hypothesis

Proposed by American astronomer H.N Rusell in 1937 to solve

the question raised on the tidal hypothesis.
This hypothesis centers on the idea that a disk shaped cloud of
gas and dust which was a remnant after the formation of the sun
began to clump together forming bodies of planetesimals. When
this planetesimals reached a size of about 1 km they began
attracting other floating bodies due their gravity. Eventually
these planetesimals got larger enough to form planets.