The Birth of the Solar System: Some Unconventional Ideas

Abstract

The formation of the Solar System has seen many attempted explanations. Back in the 1700s, three gentlemen independently arrived at the nebular hypothesis of the Solar System’s genesis. They were philosopher-astronomer Immanuel Kant, Pierre-Simon Laplace and Emmanuel Swedenborg. The scenario as proposed by these thinkers begins with a vast, hot, slowly-rotating nebula or cloud of gas and dust. As this cloud rotates, the outer regions start to cool and, in the process of time, the nebula slowly contracts and spins up through the principle of the conservation of angular momentum. As the velocity of rotation increased, rings of material were ejected from the main body in a process that has been likened, rather inelegantly, to mud being thrown off the rim of a rapidly spinning wheel. Eventually, the rings break up into discrete clouds of gas and dust which, with the process of more time, condense into solid orbs; the planets. Meanwhile, the bulk of the nebula contracts into the massive central body which becomes the Sun (Figs. 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3).