Birth of the Solar System

We know how the Earth and Solar System are today and this
allows us to work backwards and determine how the Earth and
Solar System were formed.
Plus we can travel out into the universe for clues on how stars
and planets are currently being formed.
 The Nebular Hypothesis
In cosmology, the Nebular Hypothesis is the currently
accepted argument about how a Solar System can form.
 The Nebular Hypothesis
• Immanuel Kant
1755 • nebula

• Pierre-Simon de Laplace
1796 • Refined Kant’s theory
 The Nebular Hypothesis
A large gas cloud (nebula) begins to condense.
Most of the mass is in the center, there is turbulence
in the outer parts.
 The Nebular Hypothesis
The slowly spinning
nebula started to cool
& shrink then
became a compact
sphere.
The sphere began
spinning faster &
started flinging some
matter away that
became the planets.
Protostar
Birth of the Solar System
Birth of the Solar System
Size of the Planets
 The Planetesimal Hypothesis
 F.R. Moulton & Thomas C. Chamberlin (1905) based their ideas from
Comte Georges-Louis

 The surface of the sun was disturbed by the gravity of a passing star.

 This tore chunks of gaseous material from the sun that later cooled off into
chunks of planetesimals.
 The planetesimals collided with each other and
formed bigger chunks.
 These were attracted to the sun’s gravity &
orbited around it, which became the planets.
 The Tidal Hypothesis
 Physicist Sir Harold Jeffreys (British)
 A passing star might have glanced the
sun and smashed out a huge amount of
cigar-shaped solar material.

 These condensed and turned into the

planets.
The Double-Star Hypothesis
 British Astronomer, Raymond Lyttleton
 The sun was a part of a binary star system
 A third star passed by and disrupted the
stellar twins and turned it into a turbulent
cloud of gas.
 The surviving twin became the sun & the
pieces of the disrupted star became the
planets.
Recap: Theories/Hypotheses

UNIVERSE SOLAR SYSTEM

Bigbang Nebular

Open Universe Planetesimal

Steady State Tidal

Double-Star
s
Large Scale Features:

 Much of all the mass is concentrated in

the center
 All planets revolve around the sun

Small Scale Features:

a. 4 inner terrestrial planets

 a. Inner Planets:
Earth like planets. They are composed mostly of dense,
rocky, and metallic materials.

b. Gas Giants/Jovian Planets:

Made up of mostly hydrogen and helium
Rotation:
When a planet or moon turns all the
way around or spins on its axis one time.
The axis of rotation is an imaginary line
going from the north pole to the south pol

Revolution:
When a planet or moon travels once
around an object this is considered a
revolution 
Sun’s heat causes the frozen gas to sublimate
forming vaporous jet of streams
Kuiper Belt Objects – Collection of icy
rock balls outside the orbit of the
planet neptune
From Where Did the Word Planet Come?

 The word “planet” is derived from the Greek

word for “wanderer” and was traditionally applied
to any heavenly body that moved with respect to
the stars. In this sense the Sun and Moon were
also planets.

 Dictionary says that a planet is any one of the nine

large bodies that orbit the Sun.

 But some objects have been found that are larger

than Pluto- so are they planets?
Who Discovered the First Planets?
 Ancient cultures knew that some
objects were not fixed in the sky like
the stars.

 The Greeks knew of five such

objects: Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter and Saturn

 By 800 B.C.E. Babylonian

astronomers had records of planetary
motion for Venus, Jupiter and Mars.
The Solar System Until 1781:
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn

Images from NASA

Major Solar System Bodies

 Sun
 Mercury
 Venus Terrestrial
 Earth
 Mars
 Asteroid Belt
 Jupiter Jovian
 Saturn
 Uranus
 Neptune
 Pluto
Sun
 A star
 Also called “Sol”
 99.86% of Solar
System mass
Terrestrial Planets

 Terrestrial means “Terra-like”

 Terra is another name for Earth
 Four Terrestrial Planets
 Mercury
 Venus
 Earth
 Mars
 None have rings, some have moons
Mercury

 Closest to the Sun

 Covered in craters
 Second smallest
 Only planet with scarps
 Only partially explored
 No atmosphere
 427°C peak temperature
Venus

 Earth’s “sister planet”

 Extremely hot
 96% carbon dioxide
atmosphere
 90 atmospheres of pressure
 Sulfuric acid rain (battery
acid)
Earth

 Only planet with known

life
 Only planet with a
hydrosphere
 Visible moon
 Also called “Terra”
 Densest planet
Moon

 Not a planet
 Easily visible
 Formed by giant impact
 Covered in craters
Moon Craters
Moon Landing

Buzz Aldrin
(posing)

Neil Armstrong
(reflection)

July 20, 1969

Aldrin
(Posing)

Armstrong
(reflection)
Earth Rise
Mars

 The “Red Planet”

 Carbon Dioxide polar
caps
 Two moons (captured
asteroids)
 NASA currently
exploring
Mars

Viking Lander
Mars

Viking Lander
Mars’s moons

Phobos Deimos
Asteroid Belt

 Stretch of Asteroids
between Mars and Jupiter
 Very sparsely populated
Eros
 First Asteroid ever
discovered was Ceres.

Ida
Jovian Planets

 Jovian means “Jove-like”

 Jove is another name for Jupiter
 Also called “Gas Giants”
 Four Jovian Planets
 Jupiter
 Saturn
 Uranus
 Neptune
 All have moons and rings
Jupiter

 Great Red Spot

 Largest planet
 318 times the mass of
Earth
 At least 63 moons
 4 Galilean moons
 Also called Jove
Great Red Spot

 Permanent
Hurricane
 At least 300 years
old
 Larger than the
Earth
 Winds move
several hundred
mph
Galilean moons
Saturn

 Easily visible rings

 Rings created from
former moons
 Gas Giant
 Second largest
 34 moons
 Titan
Titan

 Only moon with full

atmosphere
 Similar to early Earth
 Ice volcanoes spew
ammonia (like
window cleaner)
 Cassini-Huygens
probe
 Methane or Ethane
seas
Titan Probe Image Panorama
Uranus

 Relatively
featureless
 Tilted over 90
degrees
 Blue-green
 Methane
atmosphere
 27 moons
The Solar System Grows: What to Name a New
Planet?
 March 13, 1781 William Herschel discovers
what he thinks is a comet, but he has
discovered a new planet- the seventh in our
Solar System.

 Herschel wanted to name the new planet

George after King George III of England.

 It was decided to continue with the Roman god

names that had been used for the other planets,
thus it was named Uranus.

 This set the standard for the convention of

using Roman god names for the planets.
Uranus- The First New Planet

 Distance: 19.1 AU
Doubled the size of the
Solar System

 Diameter: 4 Earth
diameters

Image courtesy of
NASA
Neptune

 Extremely Blue
 Same size (roughly)
as Uranus
 Great dark spot
 Atmospheric hole
 Strong storms
 13 moons
Pluto

 Smallest planet
 Neither Jovian nor
Terrestrial
 May not be a planet
 One moon, Charon
 No rings
 Not explored
 Highly elliptical orbit
 20 of every 248 years,
Neptune is further
Pluto and Charon
 Quaoar and Sedna:
new planets?
Quaoar is a Kuiper belt object discovered by Trujillo and
Brown in 2002 with the Palomar Telescope.
It orbits outside Pluto and was the largest Solar System object
discovered since Pluto in 1930. Its diameter is about 1300km
(half the size of Pluto), and it is on a very circular orbit
currently one billion miles outside Pluto.
Sedna is a similar object that is even further away, and takes
over 10,000 years to orbit the Sun. It was discovered in 2004
by the same astronomers.
2003UB313, aka Xena
Earlier this year, the
inevitable finally happened;
a Kuiper-belt object was
found which is bigger than
Pluto. It even has its own
moon! Its orbital period is
560 years on a highly-
inclined orbit.
Although colloquially
known as Xena, it is called
2003UB313 until an official
Xena and its moon Gabrielle, imaged
name is decided. by the Keck telescope.